1 user hogging bandwidth of shared Internet connection

[GusBrown]

Hi folks,

In my house we have 3 people sharing a cable connection via a firewall/gateway box (sorry, can't remember what model) that connects to the cable modem - it works great.
The problem is that one of my housemates is thrashing the connection (with DC++) to the point where it's almost unuseable for everyone else. I don't want to stop him downloading his stuff but is there some way of letting him have 100% of the bandwidth when he's the only one using it but also ensuring that everyone else gets a look in when they're online? Is it going to be impossible unless we route all the traffic through an actual pc rather than the firewall/gateway box?

I thought that maybe he could route all his traffic through a proxy server running on his own machine that would let him moderate the amount of bandwidth he's using. Possible?

Thanks,

Gus

 

[skotman]

From what I've seen things that do band width throttleing can get pricy and difficult to manage. Have you talked to this guy? I know on some P2P applications they do allow you to limit the bandwidth used.
Try talking to him, its a lot cheaper and will probably get more resolved. He may not be knowingly running anything that is taking up the bandwidth...I know blaster eats up large pipes with out thinking twice.

Scott Heath

http://www.scottspad.com

AIM: orange7288

 

[thedaver]

If you had a linux box handy you could install a very FREE bandwidth monitor/throttle between the cable router and your hub/switch...

For instance...

http://freshmeat.net/projects/arbitrator/

http://freshmeat.net/projects/bw-acct/

http://freshmeat.net/projects/bwmtools/

I'm sure there are some Windoz tools too, free or otherwise.


Surfinbox.com Business Internet Services - National Dialup, DSL, T-1 and more.

http://www.surfinbox.com/business/

 

[GusBrown]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. It's not that we don't talk to each other (!) it's just that I was looking for a neat technical solution that would seamlessly and intelligently share the bandwidth. Looks like it's going to be tricky.

Gus

 

[thedaver]

Oh its so pesky using that grey matter.... ;-)

Surfinbox.com Business Internet Services - National Dialup, DSL, T-1 and more.

http://www.surfinbox.com/business/

 

[GusBrown]

It had crossed my mind that I could just write a little proxy that runs on each machine and that talks to the other proxies to negotiate bandwidth limits but I'd rather just go and slap my housemate round the head when he's killing the connection ;-)

Gus

 

[skotman]

yeah...thats more fun anyway.

Scott Heath

http://www.scottspad.com

AIM: orange7288

 

[codecref]

hi
you may like to ask your friend to set the maximum bandwidth usage by a thirdparty software at client side with is more simple. you may like to user netpeeker which I really like it alot.

http://www.net-peeker.com/

hope it helps you.
S. Mohammad