Problem with speed on a shared T1

[jjbraunius]

Hello all.

I have the following problem.

15 PCs connected to a network switch going into a Linksys business router then into "shared" T1 (768 kbps).

When checking the bandwidth with one PC connected to speedtest I get usually just a tad over 700kbps on downloads which is the promised speed, when everyone is connected speed usually drops to 250 kbps per machine and in some cases worse.

Any idea what to do to increase speed?

Apparently the cable company has given us 5 IP addresses but so far we use only one so I am wondering if I can use some kind of switch to divide the traffic before the router or anything else to speed things up.

[jdharm]

That all sounds right to me. Seems like a typical office situation.

If I had to guess what the problem was I'd say you've got a few bandwidth hogs. Find out who's got videos streaming under that spreadsheet or who's got a file sharing app running in their system tray.

The only thing you can do it get a full T1 or get your data service through DSL and leave the T1 for the phones. They make routers that have two WAN ports and they load-balance the traffic using both ports simultaneously, but that means you still need another data source. It doesn't matter how you shuffle things around on your LAN, you're being limited by the size of the pipeline coming into your office - you'll have to get a bigger pipe or get another pipe.

Josh

Yet another site soon to be neglected:<font color=green>
<a target="_blank" href=http://www.zachmax.com>www.zachmax.com</a></font color=green>