-=PCTechTalk=- re; pctechtalk; Re: router/hub question
- From: "ted" <ted_clark@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 10:07:49 -0000
Sincere thanks to all the techies that have contributed towards answering this
question, it has taken a lot of
thought/reseach/effort and i [and i hope many others] am very grateful.
i haven't kept all the replies, and at some stage i hope to delve into the
archives and piece togerther a condensed version.
one reply stated 'divide the phone line' which i think is the best reply for
any 'nontechies' needing advice, [afterthought, this
ofcourse means you go without the hardware protection that a router can give]
but the deeper information was of great interest to me
and i hope others.
cheers ted.
--SNIP-- Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2005 10:48:39 -0500
From: "T. Hunt" <ilrover@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: router/hub question
For ICS, some clarification may be in order: Any connection made using ICS and
a network is shared among ALL the computers
accessing the
connection at a particular time. The processing that the host computer
does to enable ICS doesn't take away from the speed of the connection, only
from the resources of the host computer.
If only one computer is accessing the internet over the modem,
regardless whether it is the ICS host or any other system, then it will
be able to take advantage of the full bandwidth of the connection.
However, if a second computer begins to access the internet, then the
maximum bandwidth available to either computer is half of the total
bandwidth available over that particular connection. A third computer
will reduce the maximum bandwidth to 1/3 of the total available.
"Under ICS, the connection (modem 56K) is NOT split." I'm not sure what you
(or the professor) means by this statement. The
connection is not split in the sense that a certain portion is allocated to
each system,
whether used or not. But the total bandwidth is shared among all the
systems using the connection at any one time. And it is not necessarily equal.
If system A is downloading a large file that would normally consume all
the available bandwidth, and system B logs on and starts to browse the
web, going to very simple webpages, system A's bandwidth will only be
reduced by as much as system B needs to fully load the webpages, say by 10%.
But if system B starts to download files as well, then
the
bandwidth available to each system for its task is half of the total
bandwidth available over the modem connection at that time.
I wouldn't use the word 'split', I think 'shared' is a better description. But
however you divide the bandwidth, no more can be
used
than the maximum available over the modem. You can never have more than 100%
of whatever the connection speed is, whether 14400,
26000 or 53000bps.
Think of it in terms of water and a faucet in your kitchen. If you want
to fill a bowl with water, you set it in the sink and turn the water on
full to fill the bowl as quickly as possible. You are now using the
maximum amount of flow (bandwidth) available. But if you decide to fill
another bowl at the same time, you hold it under the faucet so that it
catches half the stream coming out of the faucet. Now the flow coming
out of the faucet is the same but both bowls are filling at half the
rate they were before. Once the smaller bowl is filled and removed, the
original bowl is again filling at the maximum rate. The flow out of the
faucet never changes and remains at its maximum throughout the filling of both
the bowls.
I don't recommend ICS for 2 reasons. The first is that the host
computer gives up some of its resources to process the connection for
the other systems. The second is that the host computer has to be on
for the other systems to connect. If you are sharing a dial-up
connection, real-world speeds dictate that each computer have a modem and
connect on its own to access the internet and then log off
when finished. The internet sharing should be accomplished by the computer
operators not the computers themselves. This is what
Troth posted earlier.
If you have a high speed connection, that connection should be shared
using the technology available; routers, switches and firewalls. A
network should be set up that allows each and every computer to access the
connection independently of the others. They will still
have to 'share' the available bandwidth but with high speed connections that is
not generally a problem since there is enough
bandwidth to comfortably go around.
ICS doesn't affect the connection speed itself but sharing that
connection reduces the maximum available to any one system when multiple
systems are online.
TOM
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