One ADSL line and one Cable line

[Merlin4458]

Basically ive had enough of my flat mates downloading when im trying to play a clan match, so im trying to find solutions round it. I came up with the idea of getting telewest blueyonder cable. From my knowledge(very little) if i get a cable line for myself(Telewest) and they keep there phone line adsl from pipex, then not only will they not interupt my gaming, but i wont have to pay BT line rental, cause its cable not a telephone line.

Would i be right in thinking this?

Cheers guys

[aidanjt]

you could just throttle their bandwidth, if you have another box kicking about..
if not, afaik adsl provides lower latency than cable connections, so your flatmates would be better off on the cable line.. I'm not sure how the line mix 'n' matching would bode, you'd need to ask the providers really.

[Merlin4458]

havent got another box lying around. My only other option is buying a draytek 2600 plus with port throttling on, but i dont know how effective they are. Why would my flat m8s be better off with the cable?

[Moby-Dick]

if you use BY , wont you have to get other services ( or can you just get webconnectivity )

an extra line is only about a tenner a month more.

its not so much the bandwidth thats the problem , its the latency. If you had a box that is running packetshaping , then it will allow your CS traffic to flow independantly of the P2P traffic.

this means that even if your friends are hammering your P2P connection , you shoudld still be able to enjoy a game of CS .

the only problem is that I dont think that packetshaing is buit into any low cost routers at the moment so you'll need to use a seperate gateway box.

the good news is that somethign like that needn't break the bank.
http://www.wifi.com.ar/english/cdrouter.html

an old box with a couple of network cards in it to act as a new gateway could well be your answer.

[Tak]

You could also use a low cost router with a good implementation of QoS, for example the Linksys WRT54G/GS with the Sveasoft firmware. You can then prioritise your gaming over everything else.

The router will set you back around £40-45, but as it's a cable router you'll also need a cheap ADSL ethernet modem (you may be able to use your current device if it supports PPTP or DHCP spoofing).

[Moby-Dick]

I've not had a chance to play around with one of those modified linksys jobbies , but they do sound pretty good and possibly more stable than using a PC based appliance ( quieter and lower power consumption too ! )

[Tak]

Yeah, I'm due to get my WRT54GS in a couple of days, the hacked firmware feature list is impressive

[Moby-Dick]

it looks it - is it still quite user friendly or does it require CLI mastery ?

[Merlin4458]

sounds like all of u know wot ur talking about. But im confused quite easily when it comes to networking.
My setup at the mo is as follows:
Draytek Vigor 2200 USB
Alcatel speedtouch(stingray jobby)
3 pc running from that.

Paying for an extra line is only a tenner a month but also 75 quid installation which a uni student cand afford
does the term "box" mean computer or router?
I dont really know wot the difference between bandwidth and latency is. All i know is that when they download my ping goes to 600 + which is of course unplayable.

As one of u suggested, i can prioritise my gaming over there downloading as they will say, we paid for the connection too. So i either need to split the 2mb line we have into 3, so each 670 oddkb/s is seprate and wont effect each others.

[Tak]

it looks it - is it still quite user friendly or does it require CLI mastery ?

From what I've read, it looks like the majority of new features can be configured via the web based interface. I've currently got a Speedtouch 510 and all the "juicy" config options require CLI, not fun

[Tak]

Merlin,

The QoS feature in these Linksys routers will prioritise services you set. So if you're gaming and others are downloading, your latency will be similar to what it would be if no one else was using the line.

I don't know exactly how it works, but what you might find is that the other people downloading may not notice a significant difference in speeds, as gaming doesn't use much bandwidth. As for splitting the line into 3, it may well be possible, you'll have to check the firmware docs. Here's a snippet from the FAQ:

Bandwidth Management, also called QoS, was upgraded significantly in Alchemy. Prior versions used a variant of the familiar "wondershaper" script.

Alchemy supports both incoming and outgoing bandwidth management. Bandwidth can be prioritized into one of four classes called Bulk, Standard, Express, or Premium.

Bandwidth is allocated based on one of four criteria in the following hierarchy - MAC addresses, IP netmasks, and ports or protocols.

Bandwidth protocol matching relies on special protocol tracking modules that match and manage protocols regardles of the ports used. This allows fine grained control or blocking of VoIP, P2P, IM and many more protocols common to the Internet.

Additionally we support hardware based QoS of the LAN Ethernet ports with the same four level hierarchy.

If you decide to go for a Linksys cable router, you'll have to find out whether you Vigor can be set up in No-NAT/DHCP spoof/PPTP mode. I don't really know much about this but there are many people over at Adslguide who are using these routers so you may have better luck asking there. If the Vigor isn't compatible with the Linksys, you'll have to buy an additional ADSL modem. Also, I think Linksys may do an all-in-one ADSL unit, if it works with the hacked firmware, it might be worth looking into.