Simple Bandwidth Control Wanted

[thiggins]

I started to write a short article for the Basics section describing how to control bandwidth hogs on a home network.

I've spent the past few hours futzing with the QoS controls in DD-WRT and Tomato and basically couldn't get them to work. Maybe I'm slow, but the DD-WRT controls don't look like they add much to the upstream controls that Linksys now provides in its routers. And while the Tomato QoS looked promising, I couldn't get it to properly prioritize two uplink streams.

What I'm looking for is something that non-experts should be able to get working without having to know about pipes, queues and other such jargon. Basically simple bandwidth (preferably) or priority controls that can be applied on an application or user basis and work both up and download. The download is important because that's where most home network admins have their problem, i.e. with downloads and P2P hogging all the bandwidth.

I faintly remember ASUS routers having something like this, but that was years ago.

Ideas? Besides m0n0wall/ pfSense, please.

[mgraves]

Tim,

I think that m0n0wall's traffic shaper might get it done for you. Here are some links to docs:

http://blog.mgraves.org/2008/07/30/traffic-shaping-for-voip-with-m0n0wall/#more-547

http://m0n0.ch/wall/list/showmsg.php?id=35/88

There's a lot of emphasis on managing p2p traffic on a per client basis, which tends to be a hog.

Michael

[thiggins]

I undeleted your post because I think that m0n0wall may be the best option.

- I tried the QoS in DD-WRT and Tomato, but they are uplink only.

- Tried Bandwidth Controller Standard (http://bandwidthcontroller.com/home.html), but could not get it to even let DHCP traffic through.

Would you recommend a T5700 for running m0n0wall? Can it have a second Ethernet port added?

Another option I need to poke at some more is to use QoS features on a smart switch. Anyone have any comments about that method?

[jdabbs]

If you are willing to forgo traffic prioritization, Netlimiter (http://www.netlimiter.com/) may be adequate. Works by specifying bandwidth caps on systems or individual programs. Since it's a client-side program, you don't get to control aggregate network traffic, but it is more than sufficient to constrain a greedy app or device.

[thiggins]

Thanks for the suggestion jdabbs. I was thinking more of a centrally administrated solution.

Have you used Netlimiter? How easy is it to disable by users who are not so happy with being bandwidth limited?