Limiting Bandwidth usage of people on the same network.

Hey Ashtray

Hey, I live in a house with 4 other people. We all share the same internet connection through a wireless router. What has been irking me lately is that people are downloading stuff, all the time. I've talked to them, it hasn't helped really. It makes it impossible to browse online, and play xbox online etc.

What I want to know is if it is possible to make it so the people who are downloading get full bandwidth when nothing else is happening on the network, but if I'm surfing or playing xbox online, my processes get full priority over their multi-hour downloads.

If it sounds like I'm a dick, I'm not, the things I want to do take very little of the bandwidth, the downloading programs use all of it at once, it seems.

Thanks!

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

It's possible, but it depends on your router and firmware.

(short answer up ins)

Hey Ashtray

So... elaborate?

ApexMirage

One would assume here that you'd need to post your router and firmware

Shogun

By 'downloading' what do you mean exactly? Are they all torrenting? If so one thing you can try is to educate them about how the system really works so everyone in the house can work together to fine tune their settings to good settings to benefit everyone.

The only problem with colluding like that is everyone will have an incentive to cheat a little bit to get better speeds until it breaks down and you're back where you started.

Also, what sort of connection are you guys sharing? 4 people sharing a 3mb connection for example would be god awful in my mind.

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

The "easiest" way to do it would be to find out what services they are using to download files and what ports they commonly operate on (preferably by surreptitiously asking them/googling for info), and either throttle those ports or set them to low priority at the router (or just set your computer/xbox IPs to general high priority.) Where exactly those settings are in your control panel and what precisely you can do depends on the make and model of your router and what firmware you have. Every manufacturer seems to set these things up slightly differently, so you'll really have to look at your own panel and figure out where they are, or check your manual.

If that doesn't work or you don't have those settings, you can just close the ports their services operate on when you know you'll be playing or browsing. Not a particularly nice thing to do but hey, if talking to them doesn't work, whatcha going to do.

Krikee

You're talking about either implementing QoS (Quality of Service) on your router or having the people limit their upload speeds (if you're on cable it's the uploading that is killing you). Look into using QoS on your router for the best solution.

underdonk

If you're using a WAP that supports dd-wrt (http://www.dd-wrt.com/), install it and QoS away.

If you've got several thousand dollars to throw at the problem, these are the nuts: http://www.bluecoat.com/products/packetshaper.

Hey Ashtray

Cool thanks, I'll look into these later and try and figure out my router/firmware.

Yes, they're torrenting.

Ruckus

Hey Ashtray wrote: »

Cool thanks, I'll look into these later and try and figure out my router/firmware.

Yes, they're torrenting.

The problem with torrenting isn't always necessarily them using all the bandwidth, its the fact that the bittorrent model results in dozens or hundreds of simultaneous sessions with peers, which is a lot for most routers to handle. When my brother was torrenting, I'd see massive lag spikes simply because my router was having trouble managing all the sessions, and QoS doesn't matter in that circumstance. The eventual solution is I set him up on our other WAN IP (our cable internet includes 2 dynamic IP's) by putting a switch in between the Cable Modem and the Router:

Cable Modem----->Switch----->My Router
                  \--------->His Router