Connection question

[Zonie]

I am curious, what is the appoximate amount of connections a single router can handle on a lan network? This is not wireless but a standard network.

Thank you.

[NooNoo]

Depends on whether you are confusing the terms router, switch and managed switch...

A standard domestic router is actually only 1 port. It routes from your public ip to your private IP. A switch is usually combined with a router which gives you some private ip ports. All of those ports can be connected to switches which in turn can be connected to more switches..

What you mean is, how much bandwidth can a router handle... the answer is 10 or 100mbs on any given segment depending on the spec of the router.

[Zonie]

Sorry, let me rephrase it. What are the limatations of connections on a network when you have (1) router connected to switches within the network before you start to have bottleneck problems? This paticular router has (4) ports of which (2) CAT5 cables are connected to (2) 24 port switches respectfully.

[NooNoo]

Sorry Zonie, you need to understand that the switches do not make the bottleneck, it is the traffic that does.

Think of it this way...

You have a set of roads, all of which have the same thickness, these roads all join a road (the switch) with exactly the same thickness. Therefore if you have a lot of cars on the road already, then the roads joining are going to be slowed down while they join the switch road.

In your case you have a 24 port switch which (let's assume) has 24 computers attached.

All these computers are attached on 100mbs cable. The switch (let's assume) is a 100mbs switch. This means that you have 24 100mbs roads joining a SINGLE 100mbs road which is then passed on to the switch in the router.

If one computer is downloading say a 300MB file from the internet and the internet is capable of 10mbs a second, then that one computer will hog the whole of the internet connection is going to be feeding this one computer for (300x8 to get mbs = 2400mbs, 2400 divided by 10mbs internet connection) 4 minutes solidly - all other traffic will get held up. 4 minutes doesn't sound long, but you have to add to that repeat requests when packets collide or get corrupted and it's more like 6 minutes.

6 minutes of hogging the internet connection is a bottleneck. Your other 47 computers cannot do a thing while this is going on. It doesn't matter if it's a 2 computer network or a 100 computer network... the fact that one computer has hogged all the bandwidth is the problem.

So now you need to look at your 48 computers. If any of them have spyware or tell tales going for updates, that is taking bandwidth. There is chatter from the network itself acknowledging the various packets and working out where all the computers are.

You need to restrict the bandwidth each machine is allowed to take. This is called traffic shaping and/or bandwidth throttling - effectively you put traffic lights in your network so that everyone gets a fair turn.

What router is being used? Where is the server? Is it on it's own connection... it should be... you don't want the server getting lost in the traffic.

[CeeBee]

Routers have a limit on the number of open connections they can hold. 100 seems to be the average for a lower-end model, 200 for better ones. Many open connections will choke the router even if there is virtually no data being transferred.

[Zonie]

Orry it took so log to get back you NooNoo, had a little down time. Sadly to say, the network is peer to peer workgroup. For some unknon reason the network appears to be running smoother now. My biggest concern was too many units on the network since all of them access the same website which is a web based medical application with patient database information.

[NooNoo]

Then you are going to have a problem with internet bandwidth - if the connection slows or someone downloads a large file and there is no traffic management you will have the rest running apparently slowly. The only thing they can do is get a bigger internet connection and then apply traffic quotas.

Remember this happens whether you have computers on a network or 53.... one big download (or upload for that matter) will slow the rest down. Is this website on internet or intranet?

[Zonie]

This is a secured internet based application. There are no file downloads other then a print command from the workstation to a remote server, then back to the printer on the network at the local site. You can read more about the application HERE (http://virmedice.com/)

[NooNoo]

Right so you are wholly dependent on their server being fast and the internet being fast.

[CeeBee]

This is a secured internet based application. There are no file downloads other then a print command from the workstation to a remote server, then back to the printer on the network at the local site.
Didn't have time to read, but keep in mind that a simple print job may require few good MB to be pushed.... Start 2 or 3 such print jobs concurrently and you have a nice bottleneck... You may want to look into a QoS capable router (and actually configuring QoS).

[Zonie]

We are looking at some alternative routers as well as more bandwidth for the building they are in.