Traffic Shaping / Bandwidth Control

[1DMF]

Hello Peeps,

Hope i'm in the right place, as this is all new to me, but here goes.

I seem to be getting at times seriously appauling response times from our 4mb-Down 0.75mb-Up Internet connection.

The ISP is ademant it's nothing to do with their end, so i'm left with a dilema.

1. How do I track down what is causing this bandw2idth guzzling.
2. How do I control the bandwidth being used.

Now I have my mind being pointed to our disaster recovery system, which every 2hours backs up our data across the internet connection to 3 remote data centres.

If it is this program sucking up our bandwidth, is there a way of setting how much bandwidth it can use?

What is strange though is it's our downstream that seems to be suffering.

I run Nuria as it's the only thing Easynet will accept for speed test and the result was bizarre.

out of our 4mb down it cam back as 66kb yet our upstream (750kb) cam back as 563kb

What on earth would be draining a 4mb downstream yet leave the upstream as normal.

All help very much appreciated.



"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[KiscoKid]

An FTP download could decimate an ADSL download capacity but leave the upload capacity largely untouched.

It does sound like you need to verify your bandwidth utilisation and, if I recall correctly, I'm 99% certain Easynet setup MRTG for their customers and freely distribute the stats it generates on request. MRTG is a free (albeit complex to setup) bandwidth monitoring tool. I would go and approach them and ask them for the utilisation stats for your ADSL connection. I think you may be in luck if you do.

Some routerd (Cisco certainly) support bandwidth control. What manaufacturer is your ADSL router? If Cisco, I can advise further.

 

[1DMF]

well it's sort of Cisco, it's a Lynksys RV082.

As for the downloads, unless MS auto updates are killing the stream, I don't beleive we have an employee abusing our connection and i'm the only one who runs FTP.

As the only IT guy here, no-one else would even know what FTP stood for let alone know how to use it.

I've spoke with EasyNet and they claim they can only offer MRTG for dual bonded lines not a single ADSL connection.

As we don't have a dual bonded DSLAM connection there is nothing they can offer to help, yeah great support from EasyNet me thinks NOT!

So any other suggestions?




"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[KiscoKid]

Well there are a lot of bandwidth monitoring tools out there.. some free .. some not (albeit they can be trialled).

You REALLY need to understand how your link is being utilised. Without proof that you don't have congestion, it seems your ISP will not take action.

I would recommend visiting Google and searching for bandwidth monitor. You will ne inundated with options. I would go for one that is hopefully easy to setup and can collect and present historical data. Run it for a week and see what your utilisation is like.

 

[1DMF]

ok, thanks for the advise, i'll do some digging and see what I come up with.

"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.

 

[s0121]

Correct on several programs that you can TRIAL.
dumeter, bandwidth meter pro, netmeter, bitmeter.. for a few... you can google for them.. I recommend DU Meter and Bandwidth meter for the really easy to install and run.

Frank Smith irc.dhcnetwork.com

SomeWhere in Kansas Near Dodge City

 

[1DMF]

I've tried a few but they seem to want to connect to ports on a webserver? - we don't have a webserver, and others I have tried want to use NetFlow, which is only available on certain cisco routers, which we don't have.

Another I installed did allow me to listen to my internet IP address only the graph is useless, it's no good just showing me how many KBs is being used at a certain time, I want to know source IP, and even program name/process.

I want to know if a program/process on the server is using any bandwidth and if so how much, i'm not sure I am going to be able to get this info or find a program to contol it.

But i'll keep looking.

"In complete darkness we are all the same, only our knowledge and wisdom separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.