upload -> no download
 

I first tought this problem was related to my half duplex hub I have in my room, but I seem to have the same problem when I'm connected through WiFi.
Whenever I'm uploading (like sending large mails), I'm almost unable to download, even sending messages via msn tends to fail. Is this normal, because it's very annoying that I can't do anything while uploading things ...
If this is normal, how do I fix that (for free of course :p, trafic shapers like netlimiter or cfosspeed aren't realy an option).

Ps. I'm having this problem with Vista and XP.

I think it might be limited from the ISP side. There should be a way to limit the amount of upload at your PC tough.

to be able to download, you need to be upload some data back (over TCP) so when you're sending large emails, or doing FTP transfer or whatever to use up your upload bandwidth, your download speed will suffer, and in this case even time out

what ISP do you have?

atm we have FullADSL, but I had the same problem when we had Skynet ADSL.

did you try swapping the router?:)

we're now using our fourth router (in 3 years time).
I did read something in c't (a dutch magazine) about speeding up download while uploading by giving ACK packages high priority, I'm going to ask my dad if our router can do that. It's realy bizar, because the guys from the magazine could still download at almost half their download speed while uploading (at max. speed).