Limiting certain user's download speed on a LAN? please help.

[AaronJ]

Background Info: My home consists of 3 computers, 2 that I work on and 1 that someone else uses.
Mostly I use my 2 computers for games, ie, think: Quake 3. When my roomate is downloading some MP3's, or whatever, it totally kills my ping when he's using 95% of DSL connection.

One my computers, a P3 800 Running Win98SE w/ 512MB RAM, is the server. It's network consists of an External DSL modem connecting to 1 of 2 Linksys 10/100 NIC Cards, while the second NIC card in the machine goes to my HUB. The other 2 computer connect to that HUB, gaining file/printer/internet connection sharing.

Does anyone know of a way, or some software so I can limit HIS download speed to some extent so when he's downloading something, he doesn't hog all the bandwidth?

Thanks.

 

[err]

I am not aware of such software although I am interested to know what I can use as well

Anyway, The only possible setup for this (that I know of) would be expensive

1. Run Microsoft ISA server and ask your friend to go through ISA to get to the internet. You can do b/w throtlling there.
2. Purchase a layer-3 network switch and limit the transfer rate at the switch

those options are not really viable for home use ... hehe..

but if you can get your hand to ISA server, it would be cool.

eRr

 

[Psychoholic]

<< Run Microsoft ISA server and ask your friend to go through ISA to get to the internet. You can do b/w throtlling there. >>


That would do it but it isn't cheap, nor can it be run on a workstation. It has to be a server version of Windows. For what you're wanting to do it's also overkill IMO. We're also splitting hairs here but ISA Server doesn't truely "throttle" the bandwidth, it places priorities on it. If you have a higher priority than your friend you get more of the bandwidth if you both are accessing something through ISA Server. If you're not using your bandwidth he gets it all.

I use ISA Server so I don't have any good grip on any other free or cheap applications that you can use to throttle the bandwidth, but there are probably some good ones available. You could also use the 3-layer switch as suggested by err.

 

[TwoFace]

A cheaper sollution would be to ask your roomie to be nice and use download software with bandwidth control (most download accellerators for instance) and just set the bandwidth usage to 50% for instance while you're playing games... only works if (s)he is nice of course

TF

 

[dakata24]

i wish this feature was implemented. since im a bandwidth hog (on a modest 1.5Mbps Attbi Cable connection) i seem to always take up all the bandwidth (i try to do all my big downloads late at night to minimize everyone elses hit in speed).

i believe Morpheus file sharing allows you to throttle your upload speed. would be nice if it could also do download as well.

not sure if all ftp clients do this, but SmartFtp (Freeware) let's you throttle download/upload speed.. it's not pretty on my attbi connection (lotsa peaks and valleys), but does the job.. at least there is available bandwidth for everyone else (never had to worry about this when i was on my 3.5Mbps @home connection).

 

[HJB417]

<<

<< Run Microsoft ISA server and ask your friend to go through ISA to get to the internet. You can do b/w throtlling there. >>


That would do it but it isn't cheap, nor can it be run on a workstation. It has to be a server version of Windows. For what you're wanting to do it's also overkill IMO. We're also splitting hairs here but ISA Server doesn't truely "throttle" the bandwidth, it places priorities on it. If you have a higher priority than your friend you get more of the bandwidth if you both are accessing something through ISA Server. If you're not using your bandwidth he gets it all.

I use ISA Server so I don't have any good grip on any other free or cheap applications that you can use to throttle the bandwidth, but there are probably some good ones available. You could also use the 3-layer switch as suggested by err. >>



I use ISA too and the bandwidth throttling thing is pretty good. You can place bandwidth caps using some version of linux/unix. I think freeBSD. I don't know of any way to limit bandwidth w/ win9x. ISA makes a great proxy and firewall btw.