bandwidth control

toasterman

Hi everyone,
I live in a shared house and the cost of our broadband is split between us all. We've got broadband from Virgin and a wireless Buffalo router. This is all working fine.

However, certain members of the house use video conferencing software, online gaming, file sharing software, etc, and we're getting an issue where things like bit torrent take every last resource they can, and nobody else can use the Internet at all.
As it's wireless, it's not easy to see who it is, and just disconnect them temporarily so you can use it.

I've had a look on the router and I can't see anything on there to stop this happening, or make sure that the connection doesn't get maxed out from one place.

We do have a spare pc though (currently running Windows xp), and I found a second network card... and was wondering about putting that between virgin media modem, and wireless router.. to monitor and control the bandwidth shared around the house.. ?

Has anyone done this?
Is this sort of thing possible, without running a proxy server?
I'm thinking it'd be nice if it allowed for the fact that sometimes nobody is using it.. so if nobody is using it, you can have it all..but when someone else tries to load a web page, they get priority over bit torrent...
And maybe midnight-8am, it's a total free for all, and the people upstairs can download films if they want.

Ideally I don't want to restrict 1/5th of the bandwidth to each of the 5 people in the house, as this seems a bit mad..if there's only one person in, they're welcome to all of it..

Any ideas anyone?
I've no idea about Linux.. if it can be windows based, all the better.

Belnahua

I suppose you could drop the router down to 11a only for the wireless interface so it only operates at a slower rate per network connection?

DatabaseError

tell the torrenters to limit their upload speed, that should cure the problem.
cable or dsl?

vyseyboy

What's the exact buffalo router model?

If you're lucky, it may be one of the ones which will accept third-party firmware (like tomato or DD-WRT,) which among other things, allow for QoS (Quality of Service) control. I'm pretty sure this is what you are looking for.

It's a bit tricky to get it working, but read lots and understand what you're doing first, and that it's a little risky, and all should be well.

http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/index.php

And from what I've heard, tomato is the more user-friendly of the two, so if it's a Buffalo WHR-G54S/WHR-HP-G54 you have, maybe that's the one to try. Personally I haven't used either so I could be wrong...

toasterman

tonyhague - It's a virgin media cable connection.

belnahua - i'm not sure how that helps us... is 11a just the slightly slower speed? It's still got the potential to be higher than our broadband total speed, surely.

vyseyboy - it's a whr-g54s so is supported by Tomato, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am installing third party firmware onto a reliable, working router. Worth me reading up on though....although doesn't look like anything's going to happen tonight as virgin media apparently have problems this evening - i'm and off the net every 5minutes.

Conor_3

You need "2hotspot" - it's freeware designed for exactly your kind of situation.. It allows you to set up a wireless network on a PC and have full control over access and bandwidth. Install it on the spare PC with a wifi card in it, hook it up to the Virgin Modem via cable and you're away.

www.2hotspot.com

The online help has a very thorough installation and configuration guide.

robt_2

tonyhague wrote: »

tell the torrenters to limit their upload speed, that should cure the problem.
cable or dsl?

Over a wireless network, the number of concurrent connections within torrent software is far more likely to be a factor than just upload speed.

toasterman

Conor wrote: »

You need "2hotspot" - it's freeware designed for exactly your kind of situation.. It allows you to set up a wireless network on a PC and have full control over access and bandwidth. Install it on the spare PC with a wifi card in it, hook it up to the Virgin Modem via cable and you're away.

www.2hotspot.com

The online help has a very thorough installation and configuration guide.

Can this work via lan cables to my existing router?
We can't remove the existing wireless router because we've got several of them linked with WDS.. (lets you bridge between wireless units, to improve signal) as it's an old house and the signal doesn't reach around the whole house without it.

Actually I'll RTFM...I will need to double check, but I'm not sure you can run my router in access point mode, AND bridge it to another one.

DatabaseError

robt wrote: »

Over a wireless network, the number of concurrent connections within torrent software is far more likely to be a factor than just upload speed.

not convinced! a decent router should handle the connections well (though some routers do have problems with p2p wired or wireless) a torrenter maxing out the upload of the connection will leave nothing for browsing/streaming etc.. data is always flowing both ways, if one (up) is blocked both sides suffer

Linbox

I may be wrong but can you block ports on a router - utorrent uses 30480 block that port and turn off port mapping and port forwarding. If it has a built in firewall you could prob block torrents with that.

DatabaseError

torrent clients can be configured to use any port, and many people don't use defaults, and completely blocking the protocol isn't what the op is after.