Hi smart people,
If I have several computers on my home network and I have not set any explicit QoS rules on my router, how is bandwidth allocated? For example, if computer 1 is downloading a torrent at max speed and a second computer starts a download, how is the bandwidth allocation between the two determined? Thanks!
I see. I think I understand some of that. Thank you.
Before asking this question, I experienced a situation where I had a download going on computer 1 and then started a download on computer 2. Immediately, the download speed on computer 1 plummeted and the download rate of computer 2 increased to close to the max speed. This persisted until computer 2 finished, then computer 1’s speed picked back up. I was curious why the second download would have seemingly taken precedence.
There are a lot of variables that could cause that situation. Were both machines on the same physical link (ethernet vs wifi)? Changes to their RTT could influence it. The only thing I could really add is that you have found the reason QoS mechanisms exist, lol.
Yes, I think this must be it. Computer 1 was wifi while computer 2 was wired.
Yeah. Wifi has more latency than switched ethernet on average (and really bad worst case latency since it is a shared medium, subject to neighboring RF interference that might not even be from the network, and radios try to handle retransmits on their own).
Latency plays a big role in throughput. If one download target was ‘closer’, i.e. lower latency, it will be able to scale the windowsize higher, therefore allowing more data to flow through for a given connection. Imagine network packets are envelopes and data is paper. Not all envelopes can carry the same amount of paper for a given connection, and the more paper you stuff in your envelope, the faster the transfer completes.