Need a router suggestion for bandwidth throttling

[Stoerm]

Greetings All,

I recently allowed a download-happy friend to stay in a spare bedroom. However I do much of my work at home and depend upon high bandwidth for video and voice conferencing and the like. My current router (built into the Verizon MI424WR) does not appear to allow bandwidth throttling and I have been told that a good router is the best way to accomplish this.

As well as 1) throttling bandwidth, I would also like to use the router as a way to 2) extend my wireless network, and would be pleased if there was a way to 3) reliably block Torrent downloads. Can anyone suggest a good router for these applications?

Thanks!

 

[JackMDS]

I heard that there is Router that can displays on the Friends screen.

You stop the downloading, or look for another place.

Then displays tel No. of local Realtors.

 

[Stoerm]

Well, there's always that option, but I don't mind if he downloads files willy-nilly. I just want to limit the amount of bandwidth that those downloads use at any one time.

 

[robmurphy]

You may have trouble banning torrents as the port numbers used can be random. I use utorrent and it picks a random port each time it starts. Someone like Spidey will be able to tell you how to do this, but I think torrents can only be blocked at layer 7.

If you are concerned about voice/video you could prioritise the ports used for signalling and media. If you do not know the port numbers just give priority to UDP traffic over TCP traffic, if that is possible. Torrents use TCP at present, though there was talk of moving to UDP.

What you can do is limited by the home routers, though one with the DDWRT or Tomato firmware is much more capeable. If you do get another router make sure it has a fair amount of RAM, at least 32 MB. One reason torrents slow down internet connections is the number of connections the router has to keep track of, and often not the bandwidth used. If I'm downloading a large slow torrent, at 10 KBs through my home router the ping times for other sites go from 15 ms to 150 to 400 ms. This affects all the machines using the router.

If you have a spare new/old PC you could load a linux router like vyatta on it and that should give you the facilities you need.

Rob

 

[Emulex]

setup him up a private lan with a proxy server (SOCKS 5) then throttle that. he can go through his socks proxy all day long to do his business on your terms.

 

[onza]

I would just tell him - could you download less to none during work hours.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Anything running DDWRT or whatever should have QOS. (Quality of Service) You can set his connection up to be a low priority....then block as many known P2P ports as possible to help limit the chances of him hitting those paritcular services.

The worst part of P2P is the number of connections some of those programs generate. There's nothing you can do to remedy that except 1. Talk to him or 2. Turn his access off using scheduling in the router

Step one to all of this is to identify his MAC addresses and start filtering his traffic as much as you can within reason.

 

[gsaldivar]

As mentioned above, port-based blocking of P2P is not an exact science, and can easily be circumvented by a determined user.

If you are determined to do this on the network side, look into implementing some type of QOS system. This has to be implemented at the router level. It used to cost big bucks to do this, and was a pain in the ass to setup. Luckily, today there are some custom firmware builds out there that can implement this on a $50 home router. Unfortunately, it's still a pain in the ass to setup.

I put some links below for you. Do some research and see if this is what you need before trying to implement it. As an option, I think some of the newer routers that are coming out have this feature standard (no custom firmware required).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service

http://gazguzla.com/optimize-tomato-qos/

http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

Here is a D-Link router that is less than $100 and supports QOS:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127215

Good luck!

 

[Engineer]

You can get a router such as the Asus WL-520GU (or various other routers like the Linksys WRT54GL) and load up the latest Tomato firmware. You can set the classification of data to his IP (or MAC address) to very low to give him a very low priority in QOS.

Click me...

YMMV as I've not done this (I do use tomato) and am not sure how well it works. Maybe I'll try it!

Well, it didn't change my PC's speed but not sure if it worked or not as it may now give my other PC's priority over this one and I'm not sure how to test.

 

[gsaldivar]

Well, it didn't change my PC's speed but not sure if it worked or not as it may now give my other PC's priority over this one and I'm not sure how to test.

Test by creating two QOS categories with opposite prorities: For example, Video = High, P2P = Low. Then use a computer on your LAN to max out your entire bandwidth with the low priority traffic (Torrents). Finally, use a different computer to test high priority traffic (Video).

If the test is successful, even though your connection is being maxxed out with Torrents, the computer that is doing high priority tasks should notice no slowdown. You should also notice that the speed of the Torrents will fall immediately as the network is dynamically adjusted to accommodate high priority Video traffic.

The same test can be done using the two different traffic types on the same PC (assuming you throttle by traffic type instead of IP/MAC).

Advantages of QOS: It can work with as many computers as you want, without having to throttle individual PCs. No setup is required on the PCs themselves, the router does all the work. It's nearly impossible to circumvent this type of network management. Also, the traffic prioritization is done in real-time, so there is no need to specify hard limits on specific PCs or traffic types, the router simply organizes traffic so that lower priority stuff is always handled last.

Advanced features may allow you to specify "non peak" periods such as late night, when LAN traffic can be left unmanaged. Also there may be the ability to allow specific PCs to get all of their traffic at high or low priority, regardless of traffic type.

 

[Engineer]

Test by creating two QOS categories with opposite prorities: For example, Video = High, P2P = Low. Then use a computer on your LAN to max out your entire bandwidth with the low priority traffic (Torrents). Finally, use a different computer to test high priority traffic (Video).

If the test is successful, even though your connection is being maxxed out with Torrents, the computer that is doing high priority tasks should notice no slowdown. You should also notice that the speed of the Torrents will fall immediately as the network is dynamically adjusted to accommodate high priority Video traffic.

The same test can be done using the two different traffic types on the same PC (assuming you throttle by traffic type instead of IP/MAC).

Advantages of QOS: It can work with as many computers as you want, without having to throttle individual PCs. No setup is required on the PCs themselves, the router does all the work. It's nearly impossible to circumvent this type of network management. Also, the traffic prioritization is done in real-time, so there is no need to specify hard limits on specific PCs or traffic types, the router simply organizes traffic so that lower priority stuff is always handled last.

Advanced features may allow you to specify "non peak" periods such as late night, when LAN traffic can be left unmanaged. Also there may be the ability to allow specific PCs to get all of their traffic at high or low priority, regardless of traffic type.

I just tried setting one PC to a very low setting (20% max). I started a download on another PC (didn't change priority) and speed tested the throttled PC. The speed dropped dramatically. I changed the QOS setting (deleted it) while still downloading and tested again. The speed test jumped to nearly normal (fast) on the once throttled PC so it definitely had a big effect. YMMV of course!

 

[gsaldivar]

I just tried setting one PC to a very low setting (20% max). I started a download on another PC (didn't change priority) and speed tested the throttled PC. The speed dropped dramatically. I changed the QOS setting (deleted it) while still downloading and tested again. The speed test jumped to nearly normal (fast) on the once throttled PC so it definitely had a big effect. YMMV of course!

Awesome! There are pros and cons to QOSing by IP/MAC vs traffic type. The way you have it setup won't discriminate between traffic types, the throttled PC will always get lower priority, regardless of what it's doing. (But that might be exactly what the OP wants! ) The other disadvantage is that its much easier for a savvy user to circumvent that kind of a block (spoofing MAC, changing IPs, etc...)

 

[spidey07]

Awesome! There are pros and cons to QOSing by IP/MAC vs traffic type. The way you have it setup won't discriminate between traffic types, the throttled PC will always get lower priority, regardless of what it's doing. (But that might be exactly what the OP wants! ) The other disadvantage is that its much easier for a savvy user to circumvent that kind of a block (spoofing MAC, changing IPs, etc...)

Priority queuing is the most effective in OP's scenario. In QoS world it's called a "scavenger class". Meaning it can take as much bandwidth as it wants, until there is something being forwarded that is deemed higher priority. The only problem is priority queuing can starve out the scavenger class for bandwidth, which isn't a problem in what OP is trying to accomplish.

It's very rudimentary, year 2000, type QoS but it does what it's intended to do - stop this traffic from interferring.

One last thing - the only was to correctly identify P2P is at the application layer but you can take a pretty good guess working at layer4.

 

[Stoerm]

Thanks to all for the fantastic feedback. I've got quite a menu of options thanks to ya'll and I very much appreciate it!