pages not loading when many users are trying to access internet at same time

ati005

In Runtime
Messages
107
I've been having an issue with the internet at our school for quite some time now and I have not been able to find the cause of the problem.

When a full class (20 users) tries to access the internet, the pages crash and do not load, and the internet becomes extremely slow. This issue has been regular for a couple of months, but was not present before that. When a full class is not using the internet, the internet works brilliantly.

We have 40 Mbps fibre broadband which should be capable of allowing all our users to access the internet at once, as many of the sites are not usually that large.

We have a Cisco RV180W router, which is connected to a 24 port Gigabit switch, which connects to all the classroom computers. The computers run Windows 10 and use Google chrome as the browser. The computers do not access the internet through a proxy server.

I am trying to find out the source of the problem, and I'm not sure what it can be. At first, I thought it was the switch, as we had a 100Mbps switch, so I swapped that for a Giga switch. I also tried replacing the router for a similar Netgear one and had the same problem. The service provider has said the connection is fine from their side. I also tried using different DNS servers. How can I get to the bottom of this? Are there any tools I can use to diagnose this?

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
 
Last edited:
Can you verify whether or not you are actually maxing out your bandwidth? I'm not familiar with that router. Does it show you the current link utilization in the interface? If not, you can also call your ISP and ask them what your utilization is.

If it is being maxed, is it possible that the students are just using high bandwidth applications? Or do any of the machines have malware? Or are they all trying to run Windows Update at the same time? We've had issues before with Windows 10 being a big bandwidth hog.

Also verify that you don't have any connectivity issues between the machines on the LAN. try pinging another computer or the router IP from one of the machines. You should have very low latency (maybe 50ms at the most?) If there are problems on the LAN, make sure you have no malware, IP address conflicts, or loops on your switch.

Hope that helps.
 
You might be able to limit the "bandwidth per user/session" or something like that on the web administration tool for the device - could be a good start limiting that if it's an issue!
 
Back
Top Bottom