I know theres a zillion forums out there I could hit up, but Im not a member anywhere about computers, so I bring it to my homies.

My home network of toys is as follows:

Shaw extreme high speed internet 10/10 mb/s
D-Link wireless router 4-port
Insignia 52" Plasma HDTV
MyBook live 1TB network drive
2.0ghz PC (for BT and movie watching) its hardwired to the router and TV is the monitor
Shaw HDPRV hardwired to router
Shaw Digital Phone hardwired to router
Xbox 360 hardwired to router
And there is 3 laptops that connect wirelessly sometimes.

A problem I have is that when the girl upstairs logs on the net it boots my 360 off if its on. I think it is because I am allowed 5 IP adresses, and I use 1-PVR 2-Phone 3-PC thats on all the time 4-the router 5-the xbox... So when she logs in, or another computer, it boots the xbox to make room???

The main reason for a forum question is that my whole network seems bagged down latley, and its not really doing much out of the normal that I can see except recording something on PVR. Will the PVR recording in the background lag my xbox games and make BT run slow on the PC? Is there some cache that I can go dump to speed things up? Its slow even on a laptop, any of the 3. The computers themselves run fine, just the web browsing is slow on loading pages. Im going to try a couple things like turning off my cable box/PVR when Im doing stuff other than watching TV and see if that helps.

I also am having trouble accessing the MyBook Live external drive. I can see it on any computers on the network and open it up, but we get an error timeout trying to access any files on it. And it never was any good trying to watch a movie off it it would chop up occasionally and they seem to play good only from the PC or laptop harddrive. It used to work fine for saving something to...

Im not really a tech guy and figured I might be able to get a hint in laymans terms from some car guys... Thanks in advance.

 

If the router is between all that and your modem, and if you haven't went in and set up tunneling or something like that, you're only using 1 IP address. It sounds like your poor router is having trouble keeping up. What's happening is every device connected to the router is fighting for the same bandwidth. If your router supports it, enabling QoS will help. In simple terms, QoS sets up rules where the available bandwidth is shared more efficiently. Post the model of your router and I'll check it out.

 

Wicked man! I dont understand what tunneling is, but I would be glad to read about it and learn a little.

My router is a D-Link DIR-615

If I should upgrade this old girl whats a good one to go with for my application?

EDIT - So it seems to work the web browser fine if the BT is not going on the PC, xbox not on, but I am watching TV, and the PRV is NOT recording... If I add anything after that, it slows down the web browsers. BT speed doesnt seem to get affected by multiple feeds going in the router.

 

There have been 3 revisions to that model, so we need to figure out which one you have. The model and revision number, if any, will be on the sticker with the serial number. It should be on the bottom, and listed as "HW ver". The revision will be either B, C, or E.

D-Link added a "QoS engine' in a firmware update, which is a simple form of QoS that is supposed to automatically analyze network traffic. If we find which revision you have, and you have the older firmware, it may be as simple as updating the router.

To get the firmware version, log into your router and go to the Tools tab. It will show the current firmware version. This is also where you will update to the newer firmware, if needed.

Post the results and we'll see what you got.