Controling P2P bandwidth on a network

[jonmullen]

I need some help comming up with a good way to control the bandwith that is wasted on a network due to P2P file sharing apps. I have pretty full control over the network, just not the clients. I was thinking the best way to do this was the run all the connections through a single machine. This is where is get a little tricky. I don't particually need to just take out the P2P apps, but I would like to ensure everyone a min amount of bandwith when they need it. It would also be nice if I could cap the bandwidth of someusers when they have used *so much* for that time frame. The network is setup on an unmanaged switch so things would need to be controled by IP adress or MAC address. I would like to set something up in Linux or BSD, but dont know where to start. A second option is some sort of premade box that handles all of this. The max the budget allows for is $1000, but would rather spend in the 500-700 range at most. Any suggestions or links tto products or HOWTO's that would help me solve this problem would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Goosemaster]

look into traffic shaping....astaro(astaro.com) linux does it, and the BSD's are great for it.


All you have to do is set priorities on the server for certains types of traffic.

As in set http as the priority. Also, you can get even more complex in limiting bandwidth on certain ports.

 

[pmailloux]

Yep do a search on Dummynet it works well under BSD. Good Luck, its a great bandwidth shaper app.

 

[n0cmonkey]

ALTQ is something you might want to look into. OpenBSD has integrated ALTQ into their firewall project, Packet Filter (which is currently being ported to other platforms, including NetBSD). This shouldn't be a tough project. AuthPF might also be interresting for something like this too.