Member Avatar for curt22

I have two computers sharing dial up (there is NO high speed available except satellite) using a wireless router.One computer is wired to the router, and the other is wireless.the wired one has the modem. they are both XP. And i know dial up is just plain slow, but what i want to know is why the wireless one is so much slower even if the wired one is doing nothing, and if the wired one is doing something it uses all the speed anyway and you can't notice the other computer. they are using ICS.
The problem is that they are not sharing the internet 50/50. One is taking it all.
Incase it helps the router is a dlink di-524 and the
wireless computer is getting the signal fine.
Also is it possible to fix this??

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by TheNNS

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— is right that the extra hops matter, but there are a few concrete causes and quick fixes that often explain the big difference you see between the two PCs.

First, the LAN link speed (10 Mbps or Wi‑Fi link rate) is irrelevant to the actual Internet rate: the dial‑up link is the WAN bottleneck. Beyond that, a common practical problem with Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) + a consumer router is an address/DHCP conflict or double‑NAT. ICS on XP usually sets the host LAN to 192.168.0.1 and runs DHCP; many D‑Link boxes default to the same. If both devices try to be the gateway/DHCP server the wireless client can behave oddly or appear “starved.”

Simple troubleshooting and fixes

  • Check which device is handing out IPs on the wireless client (Control Panel → Network Connections → status on the wireless adapter).
  • Make the router a plain access point: change its LAN IP to something like 192.168.0.2, disable the router DHCP server, and plug the host PC into a LAN port (not the WAN port). This lets the XP machine keep ICS/DHCP without the router interfering.
  • Test local vs Internet: from the wireless PC run ping -n 20 192.168.0.1 to measure LAN latency, then ping -n 20 8.8.8.8 for ISP latency. Copy a large file between PCs to verify LAN throughput.

If one machine still “takes it all”

  • Look for background apps or P2P on the hogging PC and stop them.
  • Monitor CPU on the ICS host while heavy downloads run — an old CPU can become the bottleneck for NAT/ICS.
  • If fairness is needed, use a bandwidth‑shaping tool on the host or limit simultaneous connections in the browser.

Those steps will isolate whether it’s purely the dial‑up bottleneck, a configuration conflict, or a host resource/traffic‑management issue.

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Member Avatar for TheNNS

If one computer was "taking it all" the other one wouldn't be able to connect at all. It's slow because it has to go through the computer, then through the router, and wirelessly to your computer. What do you expect? It's dial-up.

Member Avatar for curt22

Ok. Thanks thenns I just didn't think that going through the computer, then through the router, and wirelessly to the other computer would slow it down because its getting 10mb and dialup up is only 56kb so i thougth it could handle it.

Member Avatar for TheNNS

but you lose bandwtidth when sharing a connection, so yeah.

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