> It should just get slower and divide the bandwidth evenly since there are> no rules to shape it.
Thats basically what should happen. Of course things get all out of whack when the connection isn't symmetric (like most consumer connections). On those, you will see severe degradation in speed on the fast (download) side if you saturate the slow (upload) side. I have often seen problems similar to what you are describing when the ISP is running a traffic shaper. I don't know what kind of physical connection you have, but it might be something capable of carrying more than 1.5 mbit. In that case, the ISP will limit you to your allocated bandwidth with a shaper on their end. If the shaper is configured incorrectly, you can see dramatic changes in speeds when the connection is active. An easy way to see how bad the problem is would be to ping a server on the internet, and then start a download from a fast site while it's running (Like grab a kernel from www.kernel.org). A single PC should *easily* be able to saturate a 1.5 mbit circuit with a download. You don't need 4 PCs doing Windows Update. You shouldn't even need to use Windows Update at all ... any download should do it. While the download is running, the ping will go up (say from 20ms to 100ms), but with badly configured shapers I have seen it rise to several seconds before timing out. As for the pfSense traffic shaper, there are problems there too. You can easily shape your upstream bandwidth since you are in charge of what is being sent. Try shaping the downstream side in any significant way, and the connection becomes pretty much useless :-( Regards, -Jeppe
