Ok, rather soon, we'll be getting 512KB ADSL between me and my brother. Now, we both download a lot, him usually at night, me during the day as at night, I usually play MMOs (or do TAFE work). So, what we want to do is completely split the connection so his massive downloads don't slow my net down (how he loves his BF1942 mods).

This is my idea. We have three rooms, mine on the right, his on the left and one in the middle. The router and modem will be in the middle room with 2 cables going from the router into each of our rooms (I'll have a switch in my room as I have 2 PCs and an Xbox). What I want to know is, will the router cut the connection in half or will we need to buy a hub?

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
512MB RAM
120GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus/Seagate Barracuda 60GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce FX 5700LE 256MB
16x DVD-ROM
42x CD-RW
16x External DVD RW

Doesn't work that way.

The router won't control bandwidth nor does "dividing up the network" have a impact on download speed control.

If you routed thru a pc and it had software that could set bandwidth usage limits then you could control the bandwidth.

You don't need a hub.

Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

Well, that sucks. So I'm guessing that even if we did use my original plan, I'd probably still get 700 or higher pings if he downloaded something while I played? Would the only way to combat this be getting a higher speed connection/2 seperate connections?

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
512MB RAM
120GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus/Seagate Barracuda 60GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce 6600LE 256MB
16x DVD-ROM
42x CD-RW
16x External DVD RW

Also, a hub would do exactly what I want, wouldn't it?

My mother's fine with getting a 3 port hub so when she gets a laptop, our downloads won't kill her bandwidth.

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
512MB RAM
120GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus/Seagate Barracuda 60GB HDD
Nvidia GeForce 6600LE 256MB
16x DVD-ROM
42x CD-RW
16x External DVD RW

IF the router has an integrated switch, you should not see much of a hit on your computer's bandwidth.

WILL POST FOR FOOD.

I think we are missing the concept here.

Doesn't matter, switch or hub, if you do major downloads which tie up the adsl line it will impact ALL of you. There is NOTHING a switch or hub can do to make ANY difference at all in this equation.

A switch or hub have NO ABILITY to throttle traffic on the LAN.

Think about it for a minute. Lets say your ADSL is a 110volt power feed into your house. You hook it up to a 4plex outlet and plug your appliances into it. Are any of the appliances going to get less than 110volts? NO. If you turn on say three appliances at the same time as the lamp is plugged in will the lamp light dim? YES. WHY? Because your download sucked up the incoming bandwidth and took it away equally from all. The startup draw from the three appliances consumed more voltage than supplied which is why the lamp light.

See how that works?

If you want bandwidth control you have to route all internet thru a server/device with bandwidth control software. Web search and you will find products.

Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

Linux has several applications for shaping bandwidth. Here