>>>Happy Christmas
>>>
>>>here's an at home problem.
>>>
>>>At home I have a Netgear Router with 4 Pcs (and an occasional MAC) and an on demand video service connected via devolo dlan mains networking. My broadband connection speed is generally about 5 Mbps (checked at speedtest.net)
>>>
>>>Something is causing my broadband to occasionally grind to a halt. If I restart the router it speeds up How can I monitor who is using the bandwith and whats being usedto see if its one of the connected machines.
>>>
>>>I'd like to be able to this centrally to save running round the house banging in doors asking if I can come in.
>>
>>The free WireShark program can do this e.g. http://sysadminhell.blogspot.com/2008/04/using-wireshark-to-determine-bandwidth.html (article is a bit dated)
>>
>>Consumer routers generally don't have the power or features to do real time bandwidth monitoring/reporting. However, some support various levels of "Quality of Service" ( QoS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service ). If your router supports it, you'll find it in its configuration settings. The idea behind QoS is to make sure "critical" users don't get interrupted by high-volume, lower-priority processes. For example, someone using Skype may not need a lot of bandwidth (especially voice-only), and not very often, but when they're using it you can't have packet delay or loss because the effect is so noticeable. So, if someone else is watching a video or downloading a movie at the same time, in theory QoS can be configured to slow down their downloads a little while Skype is being used by someone else.
>>
>>QoS hasn't really caught on because it's tricky to implement and protocols being used are changing all the time. But, if your equipment supports it you could at least give it a try - it might be a way to make smarter use of your total bandwidth.
>
>Looks like my netgear dg834 V4 does not support QOS

A little Googling seems to show it might. A rudimentary level of QoS may be enabled by default (and not appear in configuration settings): http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/826510

That post is a few years old, the current firmware may have improved QoS support: http://kb.netgear.com/app/products/model/a_id/2322 . If you're not already running that latest up-to-date firmware you should upgrade to it. Be sure to back up any custom configuration settings before you do so - screen shots of all the configuration pages is a useful way to do this, there may also be a way to back the settings up to a file and restore them after updating (if updating doesn't preserve them).