Router slowing down internet traffic when transferring data...

DJ...

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I have a D-Link 2750U (Telkom supplied). I've recently noticed that when I transfer data over the network from one machine to another, the internet slows down considerably. I ran a tracert while transferring files and had a 400ms hop to the router with subsequent hops all being around 500ms, then cancelled the file transfer and ran the same tracert and all was normal - 1st hop was 1ms and the others were fine.

Is this normal? If not, what's going on and can I fix it?
 
So when I'm streaming stuff via the network the internet is gonna suffer? Nothing that can be done about it?
 
When you copy stuff it's going to max the throughput. Streaming is unlikely to do that.
 
The transfer speed that your router can support via wifi is completely saturated by your file transfer, so any info to and from the web effectively gets shoved to the back of the queue. You could mess with Quality of Service and whatnot to prioritise web traffic, but that can be a glorious pain in the ass to set up.
 
Okay thanks guys. So streaming is fine but the file transfers are going to be a problem. Understood...
 
Such a mission. I'll just copy my Linux distros over when I'm not streaming my sport...

That'll work too :D

Glad I did my cabling already, because it is a mission but at least I didn't have to lay too much in my small flat.
 
2750u is 300mbps capable on Wifi though, isn't it? All your devices running in Wifi N, or is something dragging you down to 54mbps?
 
Mine is about 30 metres. And others even further. I've contemplated it but it's just too much work for little reward...
 
The CPU and switch has a certain capacity in terms of packets per second. If you are stressing them with high volumes of packets, for file transfer, other latency sensitive streams may suffer, as you are experiencing. This is especially true of WiFi that requires the CPU to decrypt the WPA2 packets, and hand each packet over to the wired network. If you are communicating used a wired network, the job of slinging packets can be offloaded to the switch chip, which is probably rated for maximum packets on a 100MBps network.

The alternative is to try to "nice" the file transfer, so that it doesn't attempt to saturate the available bandwidth. Your solution of "just not doing that" sounds like the easiest one to implement, though.
 
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