Stealing my bandwidth

[luigi_m_]

We use a wireless router in our house, and it seems that every time another person connects to the network, it sucks all the bandwidth out of other users, so those already connected will go down to about 5.5 Mbps. Any suggestions on how this can be stopped?

[Parapunter]

If you mean other authorised users I.e. friends and family, then hard luck, that's the way it works.

If however, you mean random strangers are connecting to your network & using it to go online, then you are a victim of crime! I believe someone was sent to jail for doing just this a few months back. First port of call is to encrypt your router, to stop others logging onto it. Go back to the manual & follow the instructions or in your internet browser, type the following address: 192.168.0.x, where x = 1. if that does not work, type 2, then 3 and so on, until you access your routers setup page & follow the instructions from there.

[portugueezer]

another point most people dont know about, is that if someone (unauthorized) is using your wireless connection to commit any sort of offences, like hacking, illegal file sharing or even browsing for prohibited content , this will be traced back to your address, thus possibily putting you in a serious situation, unless you can prove it wasnt you ( quite hard if you dont have the knowledge or the detailed logs)

the advice is : encrypt your connection using WPA-128bits minimum ( DONT use WEP) it take minutes to crack , choose a strong key, with numbers and uppercase & lowecase caracters and if possible use MAC address locking ( see your router manual, its all there)
If you leave for holidays, turn the router off !

Its a bit like car crime, simple steps go a long way ...

[Saab Dastard]

When more than one user (legitimate or otherwise) connects to the wifi network, they share the available bandwidth. This causes the throughput to a specific computer to be reduced if another PC is using the available bandwidth at the same time.

What they should NOT do is cause the SPEED of the connection to drop. If you have an 802.11b network at 11Mbps, then EVERYONE should "see" the network speed reported as 11Mbps. Similarly for 54, 108 etc.

If you see a connection speed reducing, then this is a result of interference. One or more network cards is swamping the signal for others. Other wifi networks and other radio devices (e.g. mobile or wireless phones, bluetooth devices - even microwaves and door bells) can also affect the signal strength.

If you are troubled by illegitimate use of your wifi network by others, then you should apply WPA security and MAC address filtering as others have mentioned.

You can also use fixed IP addresses rather than DHCP, and configure the wifi router (if it supports it) to only allow the IP addresses you have assigned to access resources (mainly the internet).

SD

[The late XV105]

Currently on holiday in the Czech Republic as another post of mine says, on switching on my laptop to show photos I noticed that a wireless network had been detected. Intrigued that a wireless network even existed - as I'm in somewhat of a rural backwater - I looked further and noticed the SSID (network name) to be that of a neighbour a fair distance up the street. His house is made of wood and my laptop had clear line of site through a window, so I guess this explains why I could see his service over such a distance.

Anyway, he has no security so I committed the heinous crime of connecting to get the Monaco F1 GP result.

Since then, as my other post also testifies, over the past few days I have been helping friends who live in the same street to get wirelessly enabled by configuring my old Netgear wifi router for them.

In due course, conversation during this activity turned to me explaining all the good things mentioned above and citing Mr X as an example of lax practice and potential crime implications.

"Oh, we know about lax security" came the retort from teenagers x2!
"How come?" says I

The answer was that son junior has a wifi enabled Ericsson phone and browses the web courtesy of Mr X whilst he's having a dump, this being the only seat in the house that gives a signal!

As an aside, pinging BBC gives a response time faster than I get from deepest Warks in the UK, even though I am in ever deeper Moravia at the moment, much further away from the local ADSL exchange. The benefit of few users and low contention ratios I assume!