Slashdot Mirror
Prioritized Internet Sharing for Home Users?
precursor asks: "Like many of you, I share a house with a couple of other geeks. This is normally a hoot - until it comes time for bandwidth sharing on a single cable modem (it's hard to play games with a bunch of torrent junkies). What solutions have other Slashdot readers implemented for sharing or limiting certain types of bandwidth on a home network? We are especially interested in solutions that we could implement on an aging PC or on hardware that can be purchased on a budget."
Didn't we just see the solution to this problem here two days ago?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
For home it's easy. All you need is a baseball bat. It's when you can't get access to the other users that it starts to get tricky.
Stuff at lartc.org, notable the wondershaper may serve as a basis for what you want.
link, http://qos.ittc.ku.edu/howto/index.html linux qos howto.
:). also some adsl modems have traffic shaping...
theres also several linux/bsd based easy to setup firewall/router distros.. some of them have to have qos support
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You can use Linux and QoS fair queueing to restrict bandwidth to the three (or however many) computers to 1/3 of the available bandwidth. easy.
:)
I just googled a bit and the latest stuff i can find is from 2001, but i know it can be done.
but i know its possible, so google it yourself.
Put IPCop on the aging machine and the set up priorities for different traffic.
What, me worry?
Take a look at pf, native to OpenBSD, but recently also ported to FreeBSD. (I use it on FreeBSD and it works like a charm.)
It's a great firewall and has traffic shaping options, too. Fairly thorough documentation, as well.
Yeah, I know, it's weird, but it can be achieved.
At home we are 3 intensive users sharing a 6.5mbps (~800k/sec) download and 880kbps (~120k/sec) upload.
What we do ? Well we RESPECT each other. Meaning ? We all 3 have Azureus for Bittorrent downloads, and the max upload speed we each set is 30k/sec. That means that even if all 3 of us upload at 30k/sec, there's still a 20-30k/sec available for gaming, browsing, etc. As for the download speed, we really rarely cap out the 800 barrier, so it's not much of a problem. But if it is for you, take the whole bandwidth, substract 10% of it, then split evenly between all of you by setting a maximum download speed in Azureus (I'm sure other BT clients can do this as well, but I love Azureus). TADAM !
Total time of implementation : 5 minutes. Total cost : 0$.
When I had this problem, what I told my torrent junkie roomates was, "If I ever want to play a game and I have a bad ping I will unplug your connection, no questions asked. You need to take some responsibility for your bandwidth." He promptly went out and found Net Limiter to run on his desktop (god forbid anything stops his downloads) and we agreed that any time after 1:30 am or so was wide open for bandwidth whoring. Net Limiter allowed him to schedule the changes in bandwidth so he didn't have to stay up late to up his bandwidth manually.
-Steve
Learn more about queueing at the pf FAQ.
:) - Linux distro. The simplicity, if you've never experienced it before, can feel both constraining and liberating at the same time. Give it a try if you've got a spare box. It's hard to experiment without learning SOMETHING - and if you're here I'm sure you're into learning, right? So give it a whirl. If you're not sure what BSD to try, give this a read. If you just want to buy a router, learn from the recent Ask Slashdot - Home Routers w/ Decent QoS Performance?. Best of luck!
:)
See my previous post here for a pf.conf recipe to implement traffic shaping based on packet type. You could also prioritize via IP, require a ssh session to gain higher priorities for a specific IP (authpf), based on time of day, or any other number of factors.
THE guide to pf (packet filter) can be found here. pf will run on FreeBSD as well as, I believe, a few other open OSs. I think it's really the best. Almost any reader here could surely benefit from at least a partial working knowledge of packet filters ("firewalls") in general.
=======
EXTRA CREDIT
=======
Got a few connections you'd like to tie together into one? Read more about Address Pools and Load Balancing with pf.
Another Bandwidth management HOWTO for Linux systems (last revised in '03 - may be better for concepts than router config recipes)
bittorrent traffic shaping
A nice K5 article about packet filtering with OpenBSD firewalls
Prioritizing empty TCP ACKs with pf and ALTQ
Making the most out of a busy connection
Turn that old P5 and two network cards into an OpenBSD firewall and learn to setup your own router. You will learn a TON about TCP/IP, how to protect your internal network, and BSDs in general (they're pretty neat in the way that they don't have as much "cruft" as usually found in your typical - yeah, that works
If you're going to use OpenBSD (which I'd recommend for a firewall/NAT box), be sure to support the OS which strives for portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security and integrated cryptography by ordering a CD, T-shirt, book, or hacker bunker enhancing poster. OpenBSD supports binary emulation of most programs from SVR4 (Solaris), FreeBSD, Linux, BSD/OS, SunOS and HP-UX. Development is active and it won't let you down as a gatekeeper or internal server.
Puffy says "Stay off my computer!" and means it. I sleep well at night knowing "puffy" (the name of my box) is standing guard just behind my cable modem and in front of the 5+ computers my roommates and I are running inside. Has never let me down and doesn't get in my way. Keeps Freenet and torrents from introducing lag into my ssh sessions as well..... Good luck finding a solution to keeping your pipes clean
http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/
This is just about the cheapest solution you could use. It only requires only a 386sx with two NICs, a 1.44MB floppy drive, and 12MByte of RAM, but scales quite well. I actually have it running on an Athlon 1800+ 256mb RAM box serving a medium sized computer lab. It's really easy to set up, but is missing a lot of important utilities since it's floppy based. A cd based distribution or full debian setup with trafic shapeing/prioritisation packages installed (tc/tcng or others) is probably a better idea if you have the hardware for it.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
A lot of the LiveCD router/firewall distros work on very modest hardware, have traffic shaping features, are easy to setup, and are free. Here are a few.
Your best bet, for both simplicity, functionality, and price, is a Linksys wireless router running the Sveasoft firmware. The extremely popular Linksys WRT54G 802.11g wireless router runs Linux, allowing easy customization with enhanced features. For basic functionality, a Linksys WRT54G can be had for under $50. The best you can get is a Linksys WRT54GS v1.0, which has more memory as well as Speedbooster technology.
You then flash the firmware of the router using freely available, open-source firmware such as that made by Sveasoft. I enjoy the Sveasoft firmware, as it contains a wealth of features, is easy to setup, and has good documentation. I would suggest that you download the firmware from a free mirror rather than subscribe, as Sveasoft has been known to engage in predatory business practices that it is best not to support.
Once you install the Sveasoft firmware, you will gain a new "QoS" tab in the router's configuration that allows you to prioritize certain types of traffic, certain MAC addresses, the wireless connection, and based on Ethernet ports.
I setup the Sveasoft Alchemy pre-7a firmware on my Linksys WRT54GS on a 6600/768 cable connection I share with two geeky, gamer, bittorrent-loving roommates. Even when we're all fighting to achieve maximum upload and download speeds with bittorrent, web-browsing is fast and games have no lag. This solution dramatically outperformed my expectations, it cost less than $100, and took less than 15 minutes to setup.
Thanks to everyone for the replies and advice. It was the article about the gaming router that caused me to post this question (there wasn't a huge discussion on other options besides that yet). Last night I stumbled across m0n0wall, it seems pretty full featured and clean to setup. I am a big FreeBSD and PHP fan, so I really appreciate the work that has went into it. I am going to be converting a Toshiba Magnia SG10 into the m0n0wall box, and use the bandwidth shaping tool in it (which uses dummynet). As far as those suggesting limits on the bittorrent traffic client side, we already do that. The problem is that we have some friends moving in upstairs from us, and we are giving them network access. Its much harder for me to run up there and throttle them if their working hard to increase their share ratios. Its hard enough with 3-4 computers sharing the connection, but 4-6 is going to be really difficult. Again, thanks a lot everyone.