wireless internet connection blues

[Archduke Tips]

There is only ultimately one line, so the network has to prioritize traffic. I think you might have an issue where one network card is getting priority over another.

Your cable modem might prioritize by MAC address. Therefore, when you both try to use the network, you end up getting all of the bandwidth. Of course, you don't use all the bandwidth available, so he will get some every now and then.

I am not sure how your cable modem makes routing decisions, so I can't help you further in that regard. If it can get a firmware update, then you might want to try that.

If you want to see if the problem is associated with a certain network card, you could try to exchange the cards. They have a MAC address assosciated with them that is unique.

I really think Ethereal could help here. You can monitor all network traffic and see if it gives you priority. Just look for packets coming from and going to your IP address and the other IP address. You can put it on the other computer too and look at the traffic when only it is on the network.

[MetalMilitia]

Originally Posted by RussoNWM

There is only ultimately one line, so the network has to prioritize traffic. I think you might have an issue where one network card is getting priority over another.

Your cable modem might prioritize by MAC address. Therefore, when you both try to use the network, you end up getting all of the bandwidth. Of course, you don't use all the bandwidth available, so he will get some every now and then.

I am not sure how your cable modem makes routing decisions, so I can't help you further in that regard. If it can get a firmware update, then you might want to try that.

A standard modem/router wouldn't prioritise anything, they're not clever enough.

As each packet arrives at the router the header is inspected and the packet is forwarded to the correct address by the internal switch. They arrive in series.

[Archduke Tips]

My apologies, you are right that the IP layer would not do any prioritizing. I was thinking of the scenario when both computers attempt to send a transmission at the same time and a collision occurs. As you know, the packets are processed in series, but they might not always arrive in series if two terminals try to start a connection at the same time. In that case, the IP layer will have to make a decision about who will go first, and I don't know how that decision is made. So I was calling that "prioritizing", but really that refers to something else... my bad.

Regardless, it doesn't make sense for one person to get more bandwidth than the other in the scenario that is described. I think the next thing we should do to diagnose this problem is to look at the network traffic. A network analyzer would work really well here.

I mentioned Ethereal before, but it has actually changed names to Wireshark. He can use that to capture packets on his network, and then maybe we can determine what is going on. What do you think, MetalMilitia?