Does the Router divide the bandwidth according to the number of ports?

Question

I'm building a small network where my router has 2 ports, so if I attached my computer to one port and then the other port was dedicated to a 4 other computers through a switch, does it mean the bandwidth "1Mbps" will be divided to two halfs where I get "512Kbps" for myself and the rest "512Kbps" for the other 4 computers or we all the 5 computers have the same bandwidth?

Answer 1

If I understand you question correctly you have a 1 Mbps up link to the Internet/ISP, and then a router with most likely two 100 Mbps ports, and then you are going to hook up a switch to one of those ports on your router, and most likely that switch has 100 Mbps ports. The thing to understand is the switch is going to share out that 100 Mbps to each of the 4 computers, but only if they are using it, as in if only 1 computer is sending/receiving then it will get the whole 100 Mbps, with two computers they each will get half, and on and on. The sharing is also true of your 1 Mbps line, each computer that sends/receives data will get an equal percentage of it.

That means the port that you have can go up to 100 Mbps, but going out to the Internet you will be limited by the 1 Mbps line. For the computers on the other router port it will share that 100 Mbps between the 4 computers so if all the computers wanted data at the same time they could each get 25 Mbps, but again if going out to the Internet the 1 Mbps line is going to be the limit. And since all the computers have the ability to get data at least at 25 Mbps there is no limit there and all 5 computers will get an equal part of that 1 Mbps. So if all 5 computers are trying to download from the Internet at the same time they each will get 1 Mbps / 5. Also note that if this is DSL most likely your upload speed is slower and will be divided up the same way. So that say only 1 computer is downloading a file, then they will get the full 1 Mbps, 2 computers 512K each, and so on and it won't matter that your computer is on the "unshared" port.

Answer 2

What your searching for is referred to as QOS, high quality of provider, interior the community marketplace. looking a customer grade router with customizable QOS isn't likely. in spite of the undeniable fact that there are 2 accessible ideas. replace the firmware in a type that helps it or build your man or woman. the 1st answer is to interchange the firmware for something greater customizable. The Linksys WRT54GL is surely suited for this and positively renowned because of this "hidden characteristic." you may replace the firmware in this type with one referred to as DD-WRT. DD-WRT makes it possible for a much better flexibility consisting of QOS than the inventory firmware. It additionally makes it possible for many different ideas a number of which you will discover sensible. in case you do no longer ideas a undertaking, and characteristic a spare laptop accessible, then you may build your man or woman router. All you like is a spare laptop, a Pentium 3 or greater useful on your use, with 2 NICs, ie community adapters. then you in basic terms ought to establish a application kit. i can propose Smoothwall besides the undeniable fact that there is yet another referred to as IPCop. the two are loose and can be configured to apply QOS. the two even have great communities with boards, chat rooms, and wiki's for help. of course you should consistently purchase a organisation type router which maximum in all danger comprise QOS. in spite of the undeniable fact that those are often perplexing to configure and in many circumstances cost over $3 hundred. besides you bypass at it I wish you success in corralling your 2 heavy clientele.

Answer 3

all 5 computers have the potential to use the 1 Mbps allocated bw, how your shared really does not matter, as the router will allocated data packets accordingly, so as long as your whole network is the same ( 10/100 NICs in all computers ) and no one computer is b/w hogging ( p2p server, ftp ect.. ) you should be ok, but don't expect really fast results with 5 computers sharing that type of conenction

Answer 4

It divides, but only when something is plugged into the port.

Answer 5

it "shares" the bandwidth with the number of IP addresses it issues. It has to send a seperate IP address to everyone who is using it.