Hello all, Just wondering for those who are familiar with sharing an internet connection with a wireless router if you have any experience with this problem. I live in a pretty transient student house with people moving in and out every few months as they come travelling or studying or whatever. One new girl has a Mac notebook that really seems to fuck everything up, at least for me, when her computer is turned on. Without her, the connection is fine, but as soon as she connects, my connection goes to shit, even worse than the old 14.4 days when I was 12. 4 other people intermittently share the connection, and they have noticed it as well but it really seems like I am hardest hit. For two reasons I don't feel my wireless adapter is the problem: 1) Again, it's all good both when her machine is off, and when I am on another network like a coffee shop or the university 2) This is my second adapter, after the first (a D-link hunk of crap) was ridiculously slow all the time. Around 9 months ago I ditched it, splurged on a nice Linksys card and was money after that. It's tough to get into too many specifics because I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of this shit, so really at this point just wondering if this is at all heard of with one computer screwing everybody else over. The future of podgers' WF participation depends on finding an answer, because waiting 5 minutes for a page to load is not my cup of tea IMHO!
Is she using bittorrent or some such bullshit that is eating all the bandwidth? Maybe you should ask her if she is downloading a lot of stuff, and if so to cut it out. Last year I had a roommate who liked to have a queue of 100 items on his bittorrent all the time. I throttled his bandwidth down to 3% during the day, but that policy was only enabled during normal usage hours (8am thru 4am) using the router and he soon gave up. Most routers don't support that option though, and I'm not clear as to whether or not you have access to network controls. Some more info would be helpful.
Yet further proof that Macs and their owners are wastes of space. What kind of router is it? Perhaps its firmware needs updating.
Thanks for the replies gents. The router is a D-link G650, presumably a hunk of crap. The bandwidth is not an issue from what I can tell; her mere existence seems to be enough to fuck me over. I suppose I could gain access to network controls if it came down to it, but really there isn't much in there that I would know what to change. From the little I have poked around I didn't see a way to reduce bandwidth to individual MAC addresses (does that make me sound knowledgable dropping that shit?). There is a guy living in the house who is a homosexual from Germany who thinks he knows everything, and he claims he has done everything possible. Personally I think there's a little too many penises going up his ass to get my connection working properly so I turn to the great citizens of wordforge IMHO.
Isn't a G650 a wireless network card? I.E. not a router? I ask because there could be specific stuff that we need to be looking for, and having the right hardware involved is pretty important. By the way, the manufacturer really doesn't matter so much if you're not trying to push the limits of wireless - D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, hell, even Trendnet routers will all do fine under conditions for which wireless is intended. It's only when you're trying to shoot it through brick walls or metals that you start really having to look at brands. In any case, once again, check for Bittorrent - that's really the only program that'll dominate a connection like that. The only other thing that I can think of is a somewhat obscure problem. On each network of Windows computers is something called a master browser. It basically negotiates all inter-network traffic, and is selected randomly. It could be that the Mac has Windows File Sharing (or SMB, or Samba, or whatever they're going to call it) active, and it, for whatever reason, is forcing itself to be the master browser, which can cause all sorts of really bizarre issues. I don't know enough about Macs to tell you how to turn off Windows File Sharing/SMB/Samba - O2C or Lanz might, though. It could also turn out that she needs that for work/school/etc., though, so it'd need to be an easy solution to turn on and off.
Kyle you are right - the G650 was the card that was complete junk for me. The D-link router that we are using is the WBR 1310. I see now that I do have access to the router's controls, so I can poke around with the settings, mindful of not changing anything that would fuck everything up. I got into that problem very recently where I changed a setting that appeared to kill the connection entirely, and so I couldn't get back into the router's controls to change it back, leaving only the manual reset. As it stands now, the connection is so terrible for me (and the offending Mac, amusingly) all the time, while the other computers in the house are fine. I am wondering if the dude's "security" settings are fucking us over somehow... what sort of stuff might I be looking for?
How close is her PC to yours when she connects? I wonder if they're (the wireless cards) trying to use the same channel and not auto-correcting. Tell us the truth.. she's attracted you with her Mac, because Mac lovers are so smart and unique, that you just had to have her. And while you're in the throes of passion, your PC and her Mac are trying to make bastardized little Mandows computers. (Or would it be MacinDos or Wintosh?) Joking aside, my first two sentences are a serious reply.
Have the Mac user download and run Ethereal, leaving promiscuous mode OFF. This should give you a good idea of what's going in and out. If it is the SMB client, it can be disabled by Opening the Sharing preference pane in System Preferences and unchecking the Windows File Sharing check box. If it isn't, have them turn off the wireless, restart Ethereal with Promiscuous Mode ON, and see what comes out of the router when they connect.
