Please Help...Noob and I'm lost...Internet is all messed up :(

Hello!

I am new to this site and still consider myself a newbie in the vast field of technology. I have been tinkering a bit with learning about my systems and also my home network as I begin a new career in IT (I'm beginning training for certifications soon)....BUT...I still know next to nothing and am having a HUGE issue with my home network and am completely stumped.

Forgive me if I have posted this in the wrong place..I can repost somewhere else if necessary...

We have 15Mb/s Internet and connect about 11 devices. Every device isnt usually running at once but when they are all up we usually still get pretty good speeds. It's me and my two roommates (My Boyfriend and his brother)....

Someone on our network...or some device...is causing us to randomly get download speeds of like 0.22 and up. In blocks of several hours we basically can't do anything on the internet. Basically whatever it is continues to be flooding the network completely and also dropping my connections.

I have been looking at our routers logs Wireshark, Debookie and used nmap. I can clearly see what traffic is causing the issues (I think). Also I have figured out we have an issue with IP addresses getting shared or switched. With nmap I figured out someone has eDonkey and IP_Sharer running which I assume is part of the issue.

I have factory reset all of my devices and so have they (I think haha).

I also think that my boyfriend is using a VPN or some kind of remote function to connect to another network in order to use different chat functions on his iPhone. (Not worried about catching a cheating spouse or anything...he can do what he wants..we have an open relationship....not worried about the details of this). It seems that we start having issues with our network at the same time that I see his message packets coming through the network and his packets and data are all routed through other devices along with his own.

I have also seen a lot of Windows Server activity on our network. My boyfriends brother has a PC and I am seeing traffic in buttloads labeled 'local' or 'netbios' or other things like that. (although this could be normal?) At random parts of the day, even though I have all sharing preferences off, his PC shows up as a 'shared device' on my computer.

If someone could walk me through how to determine what is slowing my internet down that would be UH. MAY. ZING!!!!!! After spending the past like 4 months trying to figure this out on my own I am about to lose my mind!!!!

Thanks!

2007 24-Inch iMac
2.4 GHz Intel Core Duo
OS X Mavericks

15mbps w/ WOW! ISP
DHCP w/ WPA2 Personal
ARRIS Gateway WTM652G
Devices Attached: iMac, MacBook, 4-XBoxes, 2-Laptop PCs, 2-Androids, iPhone

From your post the thing that stands out is eDonkey. That's not something I'd recommend is used, at all. But in this instance could well be using all up and down bandwidth you having.

You'll need to ask about the use of the VPN and volumes of traffic/applications using that. Without knowing that you can be sure if that's the culprit either. But e-Donkey would be my bet.

Thank you so much for your reply....I suspect that donkey/emule is the culprit as well. It is running with another program called "IP_sharer" on my router. The main issue we are having is different devices being assigned the same IP address.

Do you have any advice about how I can block/remove that? It's not coming from any of my devices and I don't have access to any device besides my own. I've tried blocking ports that I believe are being used, tried OpenDNS and other filtering/parental control services and also tried blocking individual device MAC addresses but whatever is using those services has applied them at the router level and even if the device is blocked the issue is still happening....

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks....

The best solution you need isn't a technical one I'm afraid. You need to speak to the other users and get this software removed from there devices.

If I were you I'd start by removing access to all devices except yours. Change the wifi password and disconnect any wired devices. Once you're happy your stuff works ok and isn't at fault allow one device at a time until the culprit is found.

I'd also reset your router back to factory settings.