Bandwidth allocation

Factual Questions
1

My home network connection is 16mbit from the ISP. Is there some way to configure my router such that either:

a) each user gets a guaranteed amount of outside bandwidth, which can either be proportional or fixed, or

b) some nodes get a minimum amount of outside bandwidth?

Here’s where I’m going with this. I work at home, and sometimes need all 16mbit (well, at least 8mb would be acceptable, but everything wide open on some occasions). SqueegeeJr is 9, and uses some small portion of bandwidth doing Nick Jr. type stuff. MrsSqueegee works at home, and part of what she does is designing/testing web stuff, which is usually not bandwidth intensive.

However: while both MrsSqueegee and SqueegeeJr use a pretty small amount of bandwidth, where I usually need a firehose several times a day, I know their needs will change – everyone finds ways to use bandwidth – and I’d like to either reserve some portion of the big pipe for me, or have proportional use but with a way to squash down the other users to, say, 1 or 2mbps when I need big bandwidth. (Actually, this could work both ways: if I’m doing an hour code-sync and am off to the store for an hour, I could cede my bandwidth to everyone else.) What’s important is that a) I can work, and b) so can they (or play), rather than someone on the net trumping the others.

How do I manage ISP bandwidth on my home network? Can it be allocated? Can I, for example, just give every other node in my house a total of 8mbps, which seems like plenty for now, and reserve the other 8mbps for my work machines? How does this work? Or does it?

2

Can do easy. You just need a router which implements QoS. I’m not enough of a network engineer to give you model numbers or prices, but it’s all standard stuff for a business network.

It’s a darn good bet your typical $49.95 LinkSys or D-link router cannot do what you want. Whether the gear you want costs $150, or $1500, I couldn’t say.