Practical Limit on Number of Router Devices

[foolycooly]

I have had comcast (15mb/s) since I purchased my condo about 10 months ago. Until recently, I have not had many issue with my connection (Medialink wireless N router configured to mixed mode on a late model motorolla modem).

Recently, however, we have begun to experience random slow downs. These usually last short periods of time and can be moderate to severe (very bad lag in games, general browsing). I always hop on speedtest.net during these periods to see what kind of speeds i'm getting. The weird part is, I usually still pull about 25mb/s down and 5 or more mb/s up with a <20ms ping during these slow periods. I even check packet loss on pingtest and it rates the line quality as "A" with 0 packet loss and low "jitter" (admittedly, I know little about this).

My roomate and I were thinking that there might be too many devices connected to the router. Since he moved in a couple of months ago, we may have as many as 9 devices connected simultaneously:

2 desktops
2 laptops
2 phones
1 tablet
1 xbox 360
1 "smart" tv (although I'm not sure if this is constantly active)

Realistically, could this be causing these issues? Is there any way I can test if these slowdowns are caused by a router bottleneck? Or is it worth getting a comcast technician to come out to investigate the issue.

Thanks for any help.

 

[RealBeast]

9 devices with wired connections should be no problem, 9 with wireless will be at the point where the wireless radio will start to be inadequate.

If they are all wireless, connect some (the most heavily used by wire) and leave the wireless for the phones. If you need to go all wireless consider adding a second wireless radio, i.e. an access point. Also, if your devices handle it go N only with WPA2 personal and AES encryption for your wireless.

 

[foolycooly]

Best answer selected by foolycooly.