Hey guys,

I have a slight problem in my shared house. I live with 3 other people in a shared house and we pay for the top of the range internet and split the internet bill between us. Anyway I have recently noticed that one of my friends is downloading movies and games all the time and the internet is lagging ridiculously. Is there anyway i can give my computer more bandwidth allocation or give his less? I'm going to be honest i am clueless when it comes to this so any advice and maybe a step by step would be great if it even is possible? do i need to buy a new more powerful wifi router for sale?

looking forward to speaking with you all and getting some answers!

Short answer: yes. It may require equipment you don't have, and what you should actually do is highly dependent on your setup.

First: how do you connect things? Wifi? Ethernet? Pigeons? Some combinations of those? What's your gateway (router)?

Second: gather data. The DSLReports speedtest tool is good for examining both throughput and latency. Compare what you get under "good" and "bad" conditions.

I connect using Wifi and there is obviously an Ethernet connection that i use from time to time but i have to sit next to the router. << gateway router.

I have just used the speed test link now when a few people are using it and it came up with 3.16Mbps download speed and 441.4Kbps upload speed. I will get back to you when it peaks and at its lowest.

Thanks for the reply

Next set of scores

3.67Mbps download 0.541 upload and the ping is 63


i have alos found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ncWjSjZKCY will it help?

What is the specific make and model of your router? Knowing that will help me/us find more information that may be of use to you.

Specifically, do you have access to the Admin page of the router? You'll want to look for a QoS setting. Somehow find the offending computers MAC address and set the QoS priority to low. This way, if no one is on the network, they get full bandwidth but, say, if you start streaming videos from YouTube or Netflix, you'll be given priority over the other computer.

Alternatively, you could try talking to the person. Mention that despite the top tier internet his activities are consuming most of the available bandwidth and if he could limit his own connection speed that'd be superb. Otherwise you may ask him to pitch in more or get his own internet (which, is unlikely since it's one house).

I was helping a friend with a similar issue before, and it turned out that there was a preconfigured router setting that was limiting the bandwidth for all of the clients. Many routers also allow you to configure different QoS priorities for each different service, which may be useful for prioritizing time sensitive things like games and live video over less critical services. I think setting priorities by service instead of by client MAC address would be a more equitable solution for everyone if your router supports it.

A single house can support multiple cable internet modems, since each modem utilizes different channels and such - but you would need to purchase separate service for each modem. Configuring QoS is most likely the best solution for your situation.