As some of you know I just moved, but now I have a problem in that i'm living with my nephews who also have computers.

I paid to put in the fastest connection I can get for my street at the moment which is 10mbit, but these little blighters play online games and download junk almost constantly whilst they're on their various computers. They played fine on 1mbit before, but i'm worried that playing a game at the same time will cause lag problems (i've not tried yet - I dont want to ruin anyone elses races).

What I would like to do is speed limit their computers to a maximum of 1mbit and hog the rest for my machine. Call me greedy, but I bought the extra 9mbit especially for this.

Is there some kind of proxy server software that enforces speed limits? Or is there a router of some kind which will limit speed of connection for specific MAC or IP addresses or something?

I think some complicated routers can throttle individual IP's, and I think if you run a central server you can software to do the same thing.

The only other alternative is to buy a router with QOS (Quality of Service) which I believe controls calls from each computer so that they have good pings and transfers, without one hogging all the bandwidth.

No doubt the clever guys will come and improve on this/correct me.

The easiest way i'd say is NetLimiter, if you can hide it well enough so teh nephews can't turn it off you'd have your network bandwidth-shaped in 10 minutes.

Other then that, maybe a black box running some of this stuff.

Get yourself a (cheap) Linksys WRT54(G / GS). make sure you get an older version than V5. Then you flash it with a 3rd party firmware(DDWRT or HyperWRT), and BOOM you got yourself a perfect router with QoS, boosted wi-fi etc.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/
http://www.hyperwrt.org/

If you have a spare machine lying about, use it as a Smoothwall box perhaps, that might have Bandwidth Shaping Features?

Im not sure, its just a suggestion

Edit: Just had a quick google, not sure if Smoothwall supports Bandwidth Shaping/QoS Straight off, but i've seen references to a QoS patch, so I think it's possible.

Personally I'd go for the WRT54G with DD-WRT or openWRT - the QoS is rather handy, and built into the firmware. I'm currently running DD-WRT v23, and the QoS seems quite respectable.

A number of the Netgear boxes also have QoS built into the firmware, but in my experience its not brilliant.

With regards to Smoothwall, the company behind it will sell you an addon module for QoS. However as Kidzer says, there is an open source patch available for it. Of course if you go this route, you get the added problem of getting your hands on enough network cards

The other thing you could do is, similarly to smoothwall, custom build a linux / open solaris box to do the same thing with some iptables magic, etc. It is a lot more effort though

I've seen Draytek routers that have bandwidth throttling for zones of your choice, but they are a pricey brand.
I'm tempted by a USRobotics router that has QoS - should suffice for the 2 PCs at my place

oh wow i didnt know QoS existed but it sounds just like what I have been looking for. it will save a lot of fights at my house.

i just looked on newegg and i saw some d-link gaming router that everyone likes, but it only has 4 ports. if i put an extra switch on it will i still get the bandwidth shaping stuff for at least some of the pc's ???

No one else has done their own explanation of QoS, but don't take my word for it being correct. It may not do what you want, and it may not do what I think it does. So do a bit of research. If anyone here knows a more accurate explanation please post it (cos I'll learn from it too )

I dont know (i'm good - but I have my limits ! ), I think it warrants looking into - both what it does and how to make the most of it.

EDIT: I've been reading the Microsoft stuff on it. It's all a bit complicated but I did note that the application itself has to support QoS and both machines have it running in order for it to guarantee enough bandwidth.

QoS appears to be a method of each machine agreeing a minimum datarate for a QoS enabled application.

my problem is basically we have 2 pc's, one downloading, and one playing games. whenever i use the download pc and download stuff, even if i limit the bandwidth, the gaming pc gets very laggy i guess cause of all the packets flooding my network. so its not the bandwidth thats the issue. my hope is a gaming router or this QoS or packet shaping will solve this.

Quote from Becky Rose :

I dont know (i'm good - but I have my limits ! ), I think it warrants looking into - both what it does and how to make the most of it.

EDIT: I've been reading the Microsoft stuff on it. It's all a bit complicated but I did note that the application itself has to support QoS and both machines have it running in order for it to guarantee enough bandwidth.

QoS appears to be a method of each machine agreeing a minimum datarate for a QoS enabled application.

I think you may have been looking at an article about a very microsoft orientated QoS. Unfortunately QoS itself, is rather vague.

Basically the way I've understood it over the years, is that the QoS we're "discussing" is that done at the packet level on layer 3 switches / routers. Packets are marked according to the type of packet they are and the corresponding amount of priority required, and then stuffed into a queue. This queue is then processed, according to priority decided by either your rules, or the rules built into the switch / router. On most *good* switches and routers, you can also allow certain Network ID's to have priority over other's, as well as physical ports. Attached is the GUI that DD-WRT gives you. Its basically just a front end to iptables with the layer 7 patch; which gives you slightly more "programmability", as this lets you inspect the packets more closely.

Effectly you can allow only a certain %'age of your line to be used, or only a certain speed of communication per port. This applies to both WAN and LAN usually.

Quote from drinklime :

my problem is basically we have 2 pc's, one downloading, and one playing games. whenever i use the download pc and download stuff, even if i limit the bandwidth, the gaming pc gets very laggy i guess cause of all the packets flooding my network. so its not the bandwidth thats the issue. my hope is a gaming router or this QoS or packet shaping will solve this.

Assuming this is bittorrent (which of course you are using to download legal content) that we're discussing, then limiting the download speed is a bit of a non-starter. For most home routers you'll find that theres normally so many open connections, that your router still can't cope. Try limiting that instead.

actually i was specifically referring to newsbin, and it is just straight downloading from a usenet server. no matter what i limit the bandwidth to the other computer will stutter badly during online gaming (even if the ping still looks good).

I am thinking about buying the D-Link DGL-4100 to try to solve this. Currently I have an 8-port SMC router which has been great except for this issue.

Second time lucky...

I've not heard anyone talk of usenet for agggess.

With regards to your problem, another explanation is that your router has a "dumb" hub (i.e. layer 1 network device) as the local communication. What this means is that it delivers all the packets, to all local ports, all the time. Which is inefficient. There could be a few other possibilities, but I'd bet my money on that.

hmm, from what i remember it was advertised as switched ports... not sure though

im about 90% on buying the D-link

by the way usenet is awesome

i can download at 7 mbps - (which guarantees an angry knock on my door)

Hmm, in that case it could be a million and one things

Quote from the_angry_angel :

I've not heard anyone talk of usenet for agggess.

What's there to say? People use it, it works, everyone is happy.

Eating bandwidth everywhere.

As a brand I try to avoid D-Link routers, i've used a few at work and had a few failures with them, infact, with all of them that i've seen go out the door.

Anyway onto solving this problem, if I buy a wireless router with a 4 port switch rather than hub (accepting that wireless works as a hub regardless - but my sister doesnt use much bandwidth) what do I need to look for in the specification to be sure I will get these packet management features - because i've never seen them before.

Depends on manufacturer, tbh. They may advertise "Quality of Service", but what features that includes is rarely documented properly.

My only experience is with DD-WRT (my example above), which runs on certain revisions of Linksys WRT54G's + a few other random routers (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD-WRT or http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/ind ... lation#Supported_Devices). I've also used some Netgear routers, and a draytek one. In my opinion, all except the ones that were running DD-WRT were crap, you dont get anywhere near the number of features.

If you find a couple of router's you're interested in, do some googling, ask on forums, and see what you can find out. Thats my only suggestion I'm afraid.

Quote from the_angry_angel :

I've also used some Netgear routers, and a draytek one. In my opinion, all except the ones that were running DD-WRT were crap

Just need to mention my netgear router/fw has an average uptime of about 30 years, firewalled throughput inside the LAN (100mbit) at over 8mb/s which was atleast pretty good when i got it, and a very decent set of basic routing features.

10mbit and your worried about lag? Thats 1.2 meg a second your connection can handle. LFS would take up about 5kbs. I have no trouble sharing a 2mbit connection with 4 others.

Quote from filur :

Just need to mention my netgear router/fw has an average uptime of about 30 years, firewalled throughput inside the LAN (100mbit) at over 8mb/s which was atleast pretty good when i got it, and a very decent set of basic routing features.

No QoS though? Which is primarily what I'm refering to.