Wireless Network Bandwidth Sharing

[Ibanezrg570]

Hey guys,

Sorry for the ne post but i'm having a hell of a time getting a straight answer when I search. So anyways, here goes:

I have an SMG Barricade G 54mbps wireless router using windows Vista 32 Home. On the wireless network I have a Nintendo Wii, a Nintendo DS and my sisters laptop. Now it was my understanding that when using a wireless connection the bandwidth that each system can access is not limited when another one of the systems was using bandwidth for, say DLing for a torrent site or even videos for that matter. This does not seem to be the case in that when i'm using Utorrent and my brother is playing Wii WiFi, he suffers terrible lag. Is there a work around for this? Or is it just that there is limited bandwidth that can be shared over a wireless network? Could these connections be sharing the same ports which might be limiting the bandwidth then?

I am a complete novice at networking, so I really have no idea where to start. Last bit of info: I am running Norton firewall and my wireless conection is not secured from others using it.

If there is something I can do to correct this I would greatly appreciate any advice.

Cheers

 

[brw02005]

Well assuming your connection is not limited by the wireless which is typcially not the case just go under the preferences in utorrent and limit the max download speed until the wii doesn't lag. Unless you have a really slow DSL connection that should solve the lag problem assuming your sister on a notebook will not draw that much.
The more advanced way to do it is setting up QOS on your router and limited certain computer or apps. Routers that do this are usually really expensive and since the wii is new they might not be designed to do it anyway. The cheap way is use DD-WRT firmware flashed into any broadcom based router (don't see yours listed).
Good luck hope something I said works.

 

[Ibanezrg570]

Unfortunately, I don't think that my PC is taking that much bandwith when running Utorrent. I've just realized that my DL rate on average when using Utorrent is 30-35kb/s. My reletively slow internet caps at 118kb/s stable. So technically, that leaves almost 90kb/s free for the rest on the network and this happens regardless if my sister is using her notebook for internet access. The lag begins as soon as I acess Utorrent or stream a video. I think it has something to do with the ports they are operating on. Beats me though. Like I said before, I don't know the first thing about networking. I think I need a pro to come in and figure this out. Unless someone has had the same prob and has solved it.

Cheers

 

[brw02005]

well personally I don't know the bandwidth draw of a wii but 90 kb/s is not very much. If you have at&t dsl you can up it for like 3 bucks to double the bandwidth. I severely doubt your using the same port. For a reference just streaming a mp3 128 kb/s-192 kb/s. If your streaming intenet video your probably exceeding or slightly below that if it's extremely low quality flash. Try capping uTorrent at like 5 kb/s or 10 kb/s. It might also be your upload bandwidth messing with you since that is typically half of your download and games need to upload more often.