How To Limit Bandwidth On Networked Computers - Sharing Bandwidth within computers

Hello all, What is the best way to share bandwidth in a network? Do I have to access my router for that? How? Im using a router connected to a modem given by my ISP.(dont know proper settings for ISP.) Sometimes browsing had been terribly slow, since other computer is eating up all resources. So any advice on how to get on with this is highly appreciated. Thank you!

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..bump.. i really need help on this..

My sister is eating bandwidth and she cannot control it either.. and I need it for work..

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What has been eating up all of your bandwidth on your sister's computer?

Streaming videos?

Peer-to-peer downloads and uploads?

What's your bandwidth allocation by your ISP? (Do you have broadband or dial-up?) What kind of router do you have? Are you actually timing out on your HTTP requests or is the Internet just generally slow?

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Our connection is DSL only at 384kbps.. really slow.. streaming videos and rapidshare downloads is what causing the speed problems..
So any proper way to share bandwidth?

I'm using Zyxel modem/router provided by ISP plugged into Edimax router to spread the connection.

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You definitely have options here. One obvious one is to unplug your sister from the Internet. 

That stinks that you have DSL @ 384KBps shared between the two of you. Someone's gotta give, since you can't exactly automate RapidShare downloads and streaming video is mostly an on-demand thing.

You may be able to set things up on your router where YOUR outbound traffic is prioritized over hers... which would mean that your HTTP requests, data, e-mails, etc. will be outbound long before her computer is able to make requests to download her RapidShare files or streaming her videos. I am not familiar with Edimax routers, but by going through the router interface, I'm sure you could dig something up.

I was trying to find out how to do this same thing, with traffic shaping, but my issue had to deal with uTorrent settings, which I fixed. I'm not sure what to tell you outside of trying to find a traffic-shaping program that works over a network (which I couldn't find myself) or to adjust router settings, or really, just telling your sister to not do anything Internet-heavy during your work hours.

 

 

 

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This won't answer the question directly, but one thing I do for downloads and Torrents: Start them up just as you are going to bed at night and let them run over-night. Zero impact on the daily activity. Downside is that it may take a night or two for large files, depending on the swarm size, availability of Peers, etc.

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Most basic routers do not provide support traffic shaping. I'm not sure which one yours is, but one solution is to get your hands on a really cheap, old PC (almost any PC from the last 10 years will do) and 2 network cards. Install IPCop or BrazilFW on it. Then, you can implement quality of service traffic shaping so that all traffic from your PC has higher priority than hers.

The network setup would look like this:


While this solution is not free, it will give you a lot of power. Plus, you may be able to get a cheap PC for free if a friend / relative is throwing out their old computer.

Regards,

z.

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Thank you very much, Yes i have to ask her to stop some activity for sometime of the day for now. Its not a problem I just want us both be hassled about it.

Plus I am always eager to learn new stuff so hey I can tinker with it sometime.

Thank you so much for the input guys. I didnt know you can prioritize the bandwidth, What settings should I look for in my router for this?
Also zakaluka that is the exact same setup i have one right now. So mind giving me some hand?

Again i cant thank you enough.. I look and posted everywhere only now did my question was answered.

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Prioritizing bandwidth can only be controlled by the router with OUTBOUND traffic, as I've stated... which means that if your HTTP request makes it out before her computer can send out a request to YouTube to watch a video, and if your server responds before YouTube does, THEN your web page will START to be served before her video stream starts. (This does not necessarily mean that your web page will load up first before her stream starts.) In order to do this, you would have to look for an option relative to traffic shaping and follow your router's interface instructions or look up information on your router on how to prioritize outbound traffic.

As far as converting an old PC to an Internet gateway/firewall appliance, I'm not sure if you can actually prioritize incoming packets, but one of IPCop's features is to cache frequently-accessed data (images, web pages) and have you access that from your client instead of requesting for redundant data, which can bring up images and whatnot very quickly. (Opera has a feature that does this exact thing using Turbo, where it caches images and other data to allow for you to load up pages much quicker on, let's say, a dial-up connection.)

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IPCop does let you do bandwidth throttling / traffic shaping. Take a look at http://www.ipcop.org/1.4.0/en/admin/html/s...ervices_shaping for more information. The version shown here is based on shaping traffic per port. So, you would simply take the ports used by BitTorrent and put the into a low priority category.

You can also throttle bandwidth on IP address, but I would have to look at the documentation more carefully to find the reference. Regardless, it can be done.

Regards,

z.

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