How to distribute my DSL bandwidth between users?

Question

I am very new to networking and don't have enough knowledge so please forgive me!

We have a DSL connection which is used by more than one user. All the users are using MS Windows 7. Can we allocate equal DSL bandwidth to each user, and if so, how?

Solution 1

If you get a switch that supports Quality of Service, you can designate a per-port maximum throughput value.

Generally speaking, cheapo SOHO routers/switches don't support this, and those that do don't do it very well.

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Side note: This really isn't something that's normally done in a business. Why do you want to give each user an equal slice? That's not a very efficient or scalable use of resources.

Solution 2

Are you sure you want it allocated equally all the time? Usually what people want is to ensure that nobody 'kills' the link for others, so something like a Squid caching proxy will do what you need and is free too!

Solution 3

Can we allocate equal DSL bandwidth to each user & how?

Get a proper router, like a decent 70 or so euro Mikrotik 450G. Set up qos policies or at least a queue with equal distribution. Case closed.

End user level equipment won't support that, but a lot of lower priced (Mikrotik) ISP level stuff (Mikrotik) considers that a baseline service.

Comments

[jwbensley]

Perhaps instead of looking to give each user a fixed slice of bandwidth, you could set up some QoS policies or traffic shaping for different services your users are accessing over the DSL line. So prioritise VPN and VoIP traffic for example, over HTTP/S. You will of course need a router that supports this, if you don't and have some funds, you could invest in a better router (+1 if you can get one that supports more than one DSL line and either bond them together, or load balance the traffic across the DSL lines). A good way to achieve this is with something like pfSense and make your own.

[Anton]

Programs like the free version of Netlimiter can do this.