Slow internet speed when multiple systems connected to a router

[Tufan]

I have a bunch of 3 desktop machines and at my house . I am in the field of share market. I access internet in all of these machines or sometime I connect all these machines through a router. Comcast is the the service provider of my internet and my television cable as well. Since I need a high speed service , I have hired an unlimited plan of 10 mbps. The system configuration of my machines is different. Two of them have AMD Athlon processors while the other three have intel quad core processors. While accessing net on individual system it works absolutely fine but when I connect all the machines through the router the speed slows down. From 10-15mbps in a directly connected cable modem it drops to 250-900kbps while connected to the Netgear Wireless router. Do anyone have any idea why the speed slow down while I use the router ? Is the bandwidth divided as I add number of machines to the router and hence causing the low speed in each machine ?

[Amie]

I do not think the configuration of your machines is causing any issue with your slow internet.If you use a dialup connection then the usage bandwidth gets divided into the number of systems you add in the network. More you add the system more the bandwidth gets divided , so the speed decreases as the bandwidth division increases. But you said Comcast is your service provider and it provides internet connectivity for high speed connections. So there is no issue of bandwidth division and the speed deduction . Since all the machines will share equal number of bandwidth , so the speed of internet in each and every machine will be equal.I think you should contact your service provider and ask to replace the modem.

[HiSpeed]

I think your router is not functioning well or there might be some minute issue with the router, just try and run a power cycle on the router and reboot he system. In most of the cases this step resolves the issue. You can just turn off the system and each and every network connected devices. Once turned off press the power button on the router for 5 to 10 seconds. Before restarting make sure that system is turned on first, then any other device and turn on the router in the end.

[BiGMaCHiNe]

There is one thing I can suggest, you can clone the MAC address of the router to your system. Just be careful while reading here I am talking about the MAC address which is the physical address not the IP address or the protocol address or the logical address. Each router is assigned with a MAC address also known as physical addressing. So you can clone this physical address to all your systems. You will not have to restart the router again.

[Connect_Me]

I can tell you what is this MAC address cloning. You know, many people request their ISP service provider to update the psychical or MAC address when they are being sub scripted with a modem or a router, but this quite a lengthy process and the user is being abstained from the service or will get very less speed until the user's request is fulfilled. So what you can do is you can alter the router's MAC address so that it matches exactly with the devices being connected to the router. Since the physical addressed cannot be changed, but can be emulated in a software called MAC address cloning.

[teenQ]

Yes that was indeed a valuable piece of information , I too do have a bit of knowledge about the MAC addresses cloning. At some extent it will work but not in all the cases. Suppose if you have cloned the MAC address of the router to your systems. You can then even switch the ethernet cables connected with your modem with the cables of your pc, it will work there too and till that you will not there is no need to do the power cycle or restart the modem or the router. But as you will switch from the modem to your router ( whichever brand it may be, it does not matter), you will face the same issue again.