Help on router with good bandwidth control

[lreid70]

Small town internet here. Usually have 6-7 meg down on dsl. I have kids that devices are eating the bandwidth (phones, xbox, etc.) I need a router that has good bandwidth control that wont break the bank. One that I could possibly add rules that give mac addresses priority over others. Any help would be appreciated. Would like to stay under $100. I have a Actiontec 3200 from Windstream currently and it does not have any management for bandwidth.

 

[bill001g]

Most asus and tplink routers have more advanced QoS than other routers. Asus runs the same software image on all their routers so their inexpensive ones should do the same as the expensive ones. Look at the online manuals and see if they will meet your needs.

Both those brands have some models that you can load other firmware check the lists. DD-WRT and tomato tend to be popular but are kinda complex. Some of the asus routers can run merlin firmware which is a cut down version of dd-wrt that still has more features than the factory image.

The main problem with using QoS on a small internet connection is what is called "burst" traffic. The rates are averages so you can get spikes of traffic but the average over say 10 seconds still meets the setting. You most times must limit the traffic much below the actual average rate to reduce the problem.

The largest issue you have is technically you can't actually do download bandwidth control on your router. The ISP is in full control and if they decide to drop something and send something else you can not magically undelete the packet they dropped. The QoS settings attempt to trick the end device into requesting at a slower rate. Like how youtube detects errors and drops the resolution. But some application like bit torrent are not limited very well using the tricks QoS does.