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Help with bandwidth hogging roomate.
Alien Queen
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello H/A, I come to you with a very annoying problem and hope you guys can help me out.
Ok so here is the deal, I currently live in an apt with two roomates. One is great, the other is not so great. If you havent already guessed by the title of this thread, he just loves to use Bit-torrent (Azureus to be exact) whenever he pleases (most of the time that is) Of course, this throttles the internet speed for everyone else in the apartment (although Im the only one that seems to care.)
I am looking for a more technical solution, because politely asking him to stop (or asking him to just limit the uploading speed) is simply not working. He usually lies or flat-out denies his bit-torrent habits.
A typical conversation between me and him would go something like this:
Me: Hey are you using Bit-torrent?
Him: Nope, the internet is just slow....
Me: ...uh.....ok
Or another example:
Me: Hey I know you're using Azureus right now, so could you limit the upload speed to something like 30k? This keeps the internet speed nice and fast for everyone else in the apt.
Him: I always keep it at 30k.
This is infuriating because I know he is lying. I didnt want to pry, but after several weeks of similar conversations, I had to find out if he was the cause of the slow interwebs once and for all. So when he went out, I checked on his comp, and sure enough Azureus was running with an unlimited upload speed. I set the speed to a max of 30k, like he promised he was doing (the interwebs was fine after I did this)....I figured this would solve the problem, but nope. As soon as he got home, the interwebs went slow again, surprise surprise.
This happens just about every day, I ask him to limit his uploading speed, he lies about it, I change his upload speed myself when he leaves the apt, everything is peachy until he gets back home and changes the upload speed back to unlimited, I ask him to limit his uploading speed, he lies about it etc etc you get the idea. This has been going on for several months and I just dont know what to do.
His computer (and the other roomate's) have their cables run into my room where the modem and router are located. Im not that tech savy, so Im asking if there is any way to limit the upload speed from my room somehow, or just block Azureus altogether. I realize that I could block the ports that Azureus uses, but it turns out that its quite easy to change the ports that Azureus uses, so I think the roomate would figure that out pretty quickly.
(Oh also, the second roomate has a computer but he rarely uses it, so anything I do wont really affect him)
Has anyone else been in this kind of situation? Please H/A help out a poor internet-starved gal.
Ok so here is the deal, I currently live in an apt with two roomates. One is great, the other is not so great. If you havent already guessed by the title of this thread, he just loves to use Bit-torrent (Azureus to be exact) whenever he pleases (most of the time that is) Of course, this throttles the internet speed for everyone else in the apartment (although Im the only one that seems to care.)
I am looking for a more technical solution, because politely asking him to stop (or asking him to just limit the uploading speed) is simply not working. He usually lies or flat-out denies his bit-torrent habits.
A typical conversation between me and him would go something like this:
Me: Hey are you using Bit-torrent?
Him: Nope, the internet is just slow....
Me: ...uh.....ok
Or another example:
Me: Hey I know you're using Azureus right now, so could you limit the upload speed to something like 30k? This keeps the internet speed nice and fast for everyone else in the apt.
Him: I always keep it at 30k.
This is infuriating because I know he is lying. I didnt want to pry, but after several weeks of similar conversations, I had to find out if he was the cause of the slow interwebs once and for all. So when he went out, I checked on his comp, and sure enough Azureus was running with an unlimited upload speed. I set the speed to a max of 30k, like he promised he was doing (the interwebs was fine after I did this)....I figured this would solve the problem, but nope. As soon as he got home, the interwebs went slow again, surprise surprise.
This happens just about every day, I ask him to limit his uploading speed, he lies about it, I change his upload speed myself when he leaves the apt, everything is peachy until he gets back home and changes the upload speed back to unlimited, I ask him to limit his uploading speed, he lies about it etc etc you get the idea. This has been going on for several months and I just dont know what to do.
His computer (and the other roomate's) have their cables run into my room where the modem and router are located. Im not that tech savy, so Im asking if there is any way to limit the upload speed from my room somehow, or just block Azureus altogether. I realize that I could block the ports that Azureus uses, but it turns out that its quite easy to change the ports that Azureus uses, so I think the roomate would figure that out pretty quickly.
(Oh also, the second roomate has a computer but he rarely uses it, so anything I do wont really affect him)
Has anyone else been in this kind of situation? Please H/A help out a poor internet-starved gal.
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Alien Queen on
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You should be able to limit speed to him, but you need to make sure he can't get the router password and change it back.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Well, you might want to be a bit more diplomatic about it, but you get the gist of it.
You can't tell your ISP because they really don't care what they do once it hits your house. It's not really a landlord situation, either. You could try embarrassing him, but I don't know if he would care much. Next time you check on his computer, verify to see if he's download porn. I mean, you don't really have to verify, because he would either have to be a complete movie-holic or i don't know what, but if he has to upload so much he's probably on an upload-controlled site, which are usually porn. So you could say "hey, you've got all the porn on the internet already." Or, I don't know, call him on his fetishes or whatever. Or delete the files he downloads, causing him to re-download them, killing his upload ratio.
You can possibly set up your router to filter stuff, but it's really dependent on the router. I mean, think about it. You've asked him repeatedly, he's blown you off. Next time he does it, unplug his cable and put a sign on your door saying "having a bad day, do not disturb."
Good advice if you want to end up diving exhaustedly someday into a shit smothered pillow.
Look, the tech solution is the best solution. Get a router that allows you to limit speeds for certain ports, and become the God in the machine.
To answer a few questions:
* The cable bill is split between us all (same with rent and all the other bills)
*The router was set up by my fiance, but he's serving in Iraq currently. I mentioned the situation, but he said that for now, the problem is between me and him and that I'd have to find a way to take care of it.
*When I go into his room to change the upload speed, I try not to look at what he's downloading. But sometimes I cant help but see, and its usually always porn.
As I said, my fiance set up the router, and I have a rough idea how it all works, I just need a better idea on how to 'limit the speed to him' as MuddBudd mentioned or a similar solution.
Thanatos, I like your idea the best
Unfortunatly Im not very good at...uh...confrontations like that. We had a fight before, and it didnt end pretty. We're ok now though, he's a good friend, just a bad roomate. Anyways, Im really looking for a tech solution before I resort to less peaceful tactics...
Or
"Hey, shithead, pay for everyone's internet." :P
Careful with this, you run the risk of him saying "OK, sounds good to me" and now he's paying the bill (and how much is your cable bill anyway, $50 a month? that's chump change) and legitimately taking up all the bandwidth.
He'll stop.
Guys I appreciate all the diplomatic suggestions, but for now I really am looking for a more technical solution so I dont have to deal with any more verbal bullshit. As I said, I'll have more talks with him only as a last resort.
A quick google search of 'bandwidth limiter' has brought me results of several downloadable (and buyable) products that do exactly this.
On snapfiles I found this category of files for free that fit into what you may want:
http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/network/fwnetmoni.html
http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/bandwidth-controller-personal-edition/bwcontrollerpe.html
^^This one seems to be exactly what you want. It is also free.
For help to work with a router, go to portforward.com
192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 are the common addresses of a router (type them into a URL bar of a internet browser)
admin and password the commonly the default router username & passwords.
I'd say if you aren't using your computer don't block it, once you get on block his addresss he will come and complain. Ship up or fuck off will be your automatical response and tell him to throttle back. Better yet talk to him and get Azerus to run so it does the majority of it's downloading at night and throttles it back during the day. With the threat of you will block his internet access he will become far more helpfull I imagine.
Satans..... hints.....
And yeah, no passive aggressive bullshit. Just say that shit needs to change.
Either configure (or buy and configure) the router that allows everyone to use the connection.
Install something on his PC that will limit his bandwidth use (either permanently or dynamically).
Disable his connection.
Option 2 and 3 will probably get you in trouble, and installing anything on his pc means he has access to it and can disable it once he knows about it and finds how.
Disabling his connection entirely will lead to confrontation, as well as him possibly refusing to pay for internet anymore, or simply find ways around it (depending how you do it).
The only way you can really get around it is to limit his bandwidth via the router, as he has to go through that, and you have full time access to it (in your room).
That said, I'd just bite the bullet and call him on it again. You may not want to confront the guy again, but honestly, if you know he's lying call him on it in front of everyone and ask to check it. If he tries to put you on the spot and asks you if you think he's lying, just say yes you think he is.
He can't be that good of a friend if he places his downloading of Porn (or whatever) above all of his other room mates on such a constant basis and flat out lies to your face when confronted about it.
He knows you back off if he lies to you, so you have enforced that behavior.
If he is smart/savvy enough with the pc and equipment you use there, as well as able to get access, there is a good chance that anything you do to limit him will be undone. So instead of you sneaking into his room to limit his upload speed, he will be breaking into the router and uncapping his speed (or undoing whatever limit you put in place).
And really, if it will wind up bothering him, now he will be the one coming to you all the time wondering if you (or others) are using up all the speed, but eventually he will get the gist of it and chances are there will be a confrontation regardless.
What your looking for is whats called Traffic Shaping. There are many software firewalls that are free you can download and setup....what I did at home was get a really cheap computer (were talking Pentium 1, 64mb memory, 5gig harddrive cheap), download a real nice Firewall called Monowall (http://m0n0.ch/wall/) and set it up on that computer. Get two ethernet cards for that computer (even those cheap $15-20 ones will work). Plug the cable modem into one, and then run a cable from the other card to the router. M0n0wall is rediculously easy to setup, and the guides on the internet are real nice.
Run it, get it installed, log into it, and then go to a section there called traffic shaping. They have a wizard you can run, and you can limit BitTorrent traffic to like, 10-20% of available bandwidth, or put it on Low Priority which is the better solution. with Low Priority, he can use up all the bandwidth he wants, but as soon as any other traffic requests to be sent out, his traffic is thrown in the background until yours is done. It's actually pretty interesting, on mine I'll be uploading at around 50-60K, and when I send out an HTTP request or an HTTP download request, I'll watch the upload drop to 5-6K, and as soon as my page is done or the download is done, the upload speed goes back to what it was and I never even noticed.
If he is a douche and has BitTorrent traffic encrypted (meaning you couldnt just say "BitTorrent traffic go slow!"), you could set everything ELSE as high priority, so no matter what his computer says the traffic is, yours will have first priority.
You can even set all traffic priority via MAC address as well, so your PC will have a higher priority than his.
QOS is tricky.. in that most will only allow you to specify certain types of traffic priority, maybe to a machine or maybe not. There isn't a consistant implimentation I've seen.
Bascially what that means is if she has to set QOS for say, tcp port 5502 to a lower priority (picking that as a random port he's chosen to assign for bittorent). In troubleshooting his now lower speed during peak times (since he's obviously noticed as he keeps changing speeds back), he could assign a new port to it anf voila, his speeds are back.
Likewise, if she assigns his IP a lower priority, unless they all have static IP's, he could set himself to a new IP and get faster speeds again.
Doesn't mean he WILL notice or be able to get around these measures, as I don't know him so I can't say. But I know that he notices what his speeds are, knows to check his client to see if speeds were throttled every single time it's done. So any speed reducing measure she takes will be noticed, everything after that is up to him.
If he knows his stuff, he can probably bypass any measures she takes to limit his speed. If he's not, then he will be stuck with the lower speed. Either way, he will notice, and confrontation is most likely inevitable unless he's a really weasely type that avoids it at all costs.
I might go to him and say "I've been changing your BitTorrent upload speed during the day, because otherwise the internet doesn't work. Is that ok?" If he says no, he is an asshole and you can take further steps (tell him you will limit the router, tell him he has to pay for all the internet, etc.)
If he says yes, you'll at least get the benefit of a clear conscience while doing it when he isn't around, and it makes him feel like more of a dick when he lies about it at night -- possibly you could work from there.
This sort of thing would be ideal, as it gets into a very "corporate" like traffic shaping situation.
But buying a whole new pc, setting it up and configuring it properly may be more than she is looking to do.
Standard home grade cable/dsl routers (that I know of) won't get her anything even close to this kind of capability. She would have to pop down a few hundred usd in order to get a hardware device that can start getting into fancy features like that.
However, if she does have an extra pc around, or can pick up one on the cheap with 2 10/100 NIC's, then she could set something like this up... no need for the router at all unless it's a wireless and she wants to turn it into an access point.
As for the power consumption on an old PC, sure.. a lof of them are beastly on power, but she could get away with an older slower machine with a well placed passive cooling system (no fans), a hard drive with passive cooling on it (as well as slower speed) and a very efficient power supply. WOuld cost abit more to get the whole thing together but she'd be left with a much lower power bill due to it, with the happy bonus of being quiet as hell too.
I'd have to look into the more advanced routers, but last time I looked, features worth your time over some limited security/firewall functions didn't really start cropping up till around the $300 mark, but that was awhile ago.
But without getting into what you SHOULD do, here's something you COULD do:
Either run BitTorrent yourself...or more powerfully (but more annoyingly), find a program which would allow you to basically DoS (Denial of Service) attack yourself.
Then run the program all night long or at times when you are not using your computer. This will eat up a good chunk of the bandwidth, thus subjecting the roommate to a taste of his own medicine.
The fact that he's getting his porno from BitTorrent (and still uses fucking Azureus) tells me he's not particularly adept with technology, so it could be that he just honestly does not realize what impact his downloads are having on everyone else's connectivity.
If you're using a common home router (Linksys, Dlink,etc.,), most routers have a factory reset button located in the back or on the bottom - holding it down for a few seconds resets all the settings that were previouisly configured. He could undo any throttling you've enabled - the only way to prevent this is too physically secure the router in a locked room of some sort, something most homes can't really do. If he's technically savy, he can find out the router's IP address, and run a dictionary attack against it to guess it's admin password, a much more sneaky way undoing things.
If you're not very technical, and need a technical solution, you're already having to run uphill. Someone suggest a old PC box running M0n0wall, which is an excellent firewall program, but also requires a moderate degree of technical compentency to use it to it's fullest, or at least to use the features you need (not to mention, building a PC out of old parts).
While I don't enjoy being negative nancy, the technical solutions immediatly available to you are not likely there with present hardware, or are easily undoable. Taking it up a notch into some 3rd party firewall action likely exceeds your abilities - and while doable, your self-confessed non-technical nature doesn't work in your favor.
I'm inclined to agree with Thantos, even though you say it's not a viable option.
I did this on our network so that anyone playing an online game always gets top priority while Web surfing gets a backseat.
What kind of router is it?
I agree it's a social problem.. and like I (and others) have said.. any action to curb his downloading is more than likely to result in confrontation. She can give any number of tries a shot, and see how much mileage she gets out of them.
He will notice, as he's been noticing her changes to his Upload speed.. I guess it's up to how savvy he is and how much he wants (or doesn't) to confront her once he's realised that his precious speed is lower and it's not a config on his system that is causing it.
All the "Easy" solutions here are easilly bypassible (changing Ip's, changing torrent ports, spoofing/changing a mac address) even without him breaking into/resetting a router or other device.
I'm thinking if you don't want to work it out with him directly, try this and if he asks about it just say "Nope, the internet is just slow...."