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Limiting Bandwidth Hogs on Public Wireless Nets?
arglesnaf asks: "I'm a consultant and spend a lot of time on public wireless networks at client sites (mostly hospitals / universities), coffee shops, and hotels. Quite often, the problem is that some person is running BitTorrent and eating 100% of the bandwidth. The result is that I can't get email during the day or play World of Warcraft in the hotel. I have considered sniffing and spoofing TCP resets to free up some bandwidth but need an automated way to handle new BitTorrent connections. Does anybody have any ideas on how to automate the sniff and reset strategy, or other ways to carve out a little bandwidth from hogs on public wireless?"
Step 1: Find wireless network with SSID "linksys" or "netgear"
Step 2: Point browser at gateway
Step 3: Log in with default password
Step 4: Change channel, change SSID, enable WPA-PSK, change password.
Step 5: ???
Step 6: Profit!
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Might I suggest you hire a consultant to set up some usage policies?
I think there's an assumption here that he doesn't control the WL router.
E.g., it's a public router, like in a coffeeshop or hotel, but which doesn't have any QoS set up on it, so it's being abused.
He wants a way of essentially chiseling out some room on the commons, when the other guy is already over-grazing his sheep there.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm a consultant and spend a lot of time on public wireless networks at client sites (mostly hospitals / universities)
Get yourself an EVDO cellular modem. You can deduct it as a business expense. And stop trying to disrupt other peoples's connection.
If you have a problem with bandwidth hogs, complain to the WiFi service provider. Don't take the matter into your own hands. You are not the bandwith police, what you are doing is probably illegal.
I'm currently thinking of setting up a Fon acces point at home (www.fon.com) however I am worried that some people will just go stupid and hog all the bandwith.
Is there anyway to limit individual bandwith to approx 150kps?
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
really work for the the MPAA/RIAA and want to find a way to kill the somewhat anonymous usage of bittorrent on free public wi-fi?
Go and unplug the router. Most likely, anyone using bittorrent is leaving the computer unattended so, dropping thier connection will likely keep them from reconnecting, particularly if the hotspot is using nocatauth.
Though it it was properly setup, they would just have QoS set on the router, so no one person could be a hog.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
You go from room to room asking if anyone is running bittorrent. When you find someone who is, shoot them and close bittorrent. I think any judge would consider this reasonable, after all it's *your* bandwidth they're stealing, and clearly thoes denied their WoW fix can't be expected to behave entirely rationally.
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Take a goatse jpg. Find the SMB shared folder of the person using bittorrent. Upload the goatse image to the folder, rename it, and upload again. Repeat until their harddrive is filled up. BT cannot continue downloading due to insufficient space, and since they're running Windows, it'll probably start working really slow. Problem solved.
Virtually every access point, router, controller sold on the market today comes complete with bandwidth control functions built in to them.
Familiarize yourself with QoS, Contenet Filtering, and bandwidth throttling via caping per-user throughput.
If the traffic and workload are too heavy for small router configurations in attempt to gain control of the issue, one should seek out companies like WatchGaurd, St. Bernard, Baracuda, and many more. These are content filtering hardware manufacturers. They produce exclusive devices that do this exact task. Depending on your influence on the design of the network and budget, a content filter is always going to be the best answer. Control times, site urls, meta tag filters, etc are all normal functions of these pieces of equipment and the work very well. These are often times found in educaion networks where kids pound the network with YouTube video requests, Limewire traffic, and IM nonsense.
Lastly, I do not intend to sound insluting here, but if a 'consultant' were to be 'consulting' Slashdot for ideas on how to control things like QoS, I'd be questioning the actual hands-on-knowledge of said 'consultant' and wondering if that person/company were the right ones to choose for handling my networks.
Step 1: Find a solution you could impliment cheaply if only you had permission. :( : Pay self-employment taxes on value of bartered goods.
:)
Step 2: Buy the coffee shop or hotel manager lunch. Explain that they have a problem and that you are willing to fix it in exchange for goods and services. Explain how this will make life better for all their customers.
Step 3: After getting permission, fix the problem.
Step 4: Enjoy the coffee or free room-nights.
Step 5, required in some countries
Step 6: Use reference to get a better job than the one you have
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'd suggest you go to the front desk and tell them that you are having problems with the wireless. That you are staying in this hotel because they have internet access. I'd suggest that you tell them someone needs to look into the situation or move you to another hotel. Tell them that you suspect that someone is doing something against the law ( I know running bit torent is not against the law ) and taking up all the bandwidth. Who knows you can drop in the comment, I think that someone is running an unlawful site and allowing people to download pirated movies and that the MPAA and RIAA may come after the hotel and sue them. That would get their attention.
Complaining often works!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
...ya bitch about The Next Guy hogging your bandwidth, and yet most of you clamour for "Net Neutrality."
Irony.... glooooorious irony.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
If you reduce your mtu, you might be able to squeeze some packets through and reduce latency. At least that is what I did when sharing a 56K modem connection. This also helps when your webbrowser is trying to download multiple images simultaneously.
Otherwise, go to Starbucks and pay $.10 cents a minute, because hardly anyone else will.
It depends a little on the organisation. In some cases (typically the smaller ones), there will be a technically minded IT guy running this who doesn't experience the problems himself but would appreciate the feedback, and make appropriate adjustments to the router.
We used to have this problem when I lived in a house where 10-15 people shared a wireless connection and none of us had admin access to the router. We couldn't play XBOX live or anything because some asshat was downloading porn on bittorrent constantly. I used to just spoof ARP packets and have all of the traffic route through me, whereby I'd summarily kill all of his traffic and mess up his routing tables.
- tom -
The proper way to handle this problem is for the hotel to install an intelligent LAN router that can limit bandwidth for each user. This solution is protocol independent and not easily bypassed.
Customize bittorrent to receive/deliver your email, then loadup your modified bittorrent client and have both clients automatically fight out the bandwidth.
Isn't WOW a bandwidth hog?
Sort of seems like you are asking how can I kick off OTHER bandwidth hogs?
Or how do I control a free open network I don't own?
Okay...
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I've never actually used it because I'm too cheap to buy another 802.11 adapter, but from what I've read airpwn can do this, although I'm not sure how scriptable it is.
I know it did some fun things with goatse injection at defcon
Comparing a coffee shop or hospital to an ISP is a bit much, don't you think?
The ISP has common-carrier status. They have regulations that assume they are neutral and treat all traffic equally, in return for various benefits. Also, in many cases there is no real competition. If the ISP decides to go non-neutral, there really isn't any way around it.
If there were many local ISPs, each with a different set of bandwidth rules, and they actually *advertised* those rules and charged a fair price for the various options, I suspect most people would be satisfied. However, as it is, most places only have one or two high speed providers, which really isn't enough competition for that sort of scenario.
A non-neutral wifi connection in a coffee shop is a whole different ballgame. They are offering it as either a free or paid service, and the terms on which they offer it are completely up to them. If they guarantee each customer a certain amount of bandwidth, or preferentially allow email, shell, and web traffic while throttling bulk downloads, I suspect that many of their customers would be happier. They could even advertise it...and the bulk downloaders could then go somewhere else or live with reduced speeds.
Chris
It was fun getting online while travelling, back before public connectivity was widespread. I used to pack my hefty old 486 portable with a modem cord with alligator clips on the end (beige box style) and some straight pins of the type normally used for sewing. If you could stick two pins into the phone cord at different spots, one touching the "ring" line and the other touching the "tip," you could clip your modem onto those pins and get online without having to explain to some backwater motel clerk (or whoever else owned the line you were fiddling with) what BBSes and Usenet were all about, and your work would be pretty much undetectable afterward.
You kids with your wireless networks and your rock-n-roll and your hula hoops and your big pants... Get off my lawn!!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Hate to tell you buddy... If you want to get a good clean connection - work from home, setup your own network - brew your own coffee, and get the quality that you need. If you want to sit in a coffee house and drink overpriced drinks, talk loudly on your cell phone, and use their connection to gring your Tier II gear in WoW - Well, you get what you pay for.
Now quit whinning and let the bandwidth hogs do what they need to do as well.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
WoW is actually quite low bandwidth, on par with web browsing. Doesn't often hit 3k per sec. WoW would be playable on a 28.8 modem if your latency is low enough.
This seems like the closest thing to a solution I've yet seen in the thread. (I was hoping for "Stab People In The Face Wireless Protocol" but apparently it still hasn't been implemented.)
I wonder if running it slows down your own connection though, since you're constantly injecting packets into the other guy's connection.
Might he have to get another computer in order to run tcpnice, and then do his normal internet activities from another machine?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well as long as no one said that the "wireless network" is "unlimited". The "asshat" has nothing to fall back on. Unlike other "abusers"of the "commons" [hint, hint].
...or does this fellow complaining about BitTorrent users eating up bandwidth preventing him from eating up that same bandwidth playing WoW just seem... kinda... ironic? :/
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
The whole premise is ludicrous. Quit wasting our time.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
I had implemented QOS (Quality of Service) using Class Based Queuing (CBQ) approximately 4 years ago on a Linux box. I use to limit bandwidth hogged by the ubiquitous P2P clients those days. I hope this kind of solution will still work in the current environment.
...and I caught him fucking with connections, especially MINE, I'd walk the 800+ foot radius from my router, circle around the router at that distance, find this bastard and BEAT HIS ASS.
This is not your network, pal. Quit trying to fuck it up. First come, FIRST FUCKING SERVE.
*WHIIIINE* I Can't play my life-sucking WoW because of the Pir8s on BT!!!11one.
Gimme a fucking break.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It is more expensive than an old computer with OpenBSD on it, but it very simple to set up and is very easy to limit the speed of users by class.
We had a hotel with a 1.5Mb wireless connection that had a movie downloader just hammering us night and day. Not only was it killing the service for other users at the hotel, it was killing service for other users all over our wireless network.
Solution: We talked the hotel into getting a D-LINK DSA-3100. I had it installed in an afternoon, the hotel had a captive portal to boot, and everyone got a smaller but much fairer share of the bandwidth.
We have not had hardly a single issue with that hotel since the router was installed.
And note that this router replaced a semi-high-dollar secure router...that hung up under heavy traffic left and right.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
What you're saying is that some guy running bittorent doesn't have a right to bandwidth, but you do? Do you know the definition of "public network"?
Grow up already.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
"I'm a Student and spend a lot of time on public wireless networks at my university, coffee shops, and hotels. Recently I have noticed the alot of disconections in my Bittorent of linux distro's I need to download for my CS thesis. The result is that I can't my thesis completed, during the day I have noticed someone playing World of Warcraft without any problems. I have considered sniffing and spoofing TCP resets to free up some bandwidth but need an automated way to handle new connections. Does anybody have any ideas on how to automate the sniff and reset strategy, or other ways to carve out a little bandwidth from hogs on the wireless sytem that my college tuition pays for?"
iRepairIT - iPhone, Mac, & PC Repair
SIG: HUP
someday, maybe soon, the majority of file-sharing traffic will go over port 80.
It will be harder to distingish file-transfer-over-port-80 traffic from someone who is just mirroring slashdot.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
To DIY, put a distribution like OpenWRT on something like a Linksys WRT54G, that will give you all the flexibility you need to setup bandwidth management.
For an off the shelf solution, the Asus 500gl has various bandwidth management features. Haven't used it myself but it seems worth a look.
Here's a fun question: is being put up the same hotel for 6 months rather than some arrangement intended for such long-term stays an ethical use of money?
Expected response: it's not my money, and _________
We use Zonecd here and i thought it allows you to set how much bandwidth each person can use. Well I know it definately allows to set over all bandwidth. We have it set to 5/1 , but the actual connection is 15/2 Also you can just block the bit torrent ports. I think its a matter of how the access point is setup.
Also by the way zonecd is free :)
No consideration given to the ISP? Their peerings don't just happen; they are negotiated, contracts are signed and only then are peerings implemented. I don't know how the "no consideration" fallacy could have sprouted and become so widespread if not for the powerful lobbying machines trying to spin the public to their side.
Take a look at the candy bowl from the opposite view and you can just as easily see a Google or YouTube providing the candy and a middleman (ISP) taking it and selling it to other kids (customers). And that's fine, as every candy transaction is happening according to the agreement between the 2 parties (e.g. settlement-free peering, paid transit, ISP/customer relationship, etc).
A senior citizen putting out a candy bowl is kind of like a coffee shop putting out a Linksys router.
An ISP is more like a supermarket. If I go to the supermarket and buy up every last bit of Halloween candy, that's my right. My mother should not be standing there at Wall-Mart telling me I should buy some vegetables.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It's not. Given two open HTTP downloads, they'll usually even out to about the same speed. The reason BT always soaks up more bandwidth is it will open an unlimited number of connections.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This isn't just about WoW. It's also about email. Personally, I use public wireless to actually get work done, from time to time.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Most places that filter BitTorrent don't even consider ports, because those are so often randomized now. They check for something that looks like a BitTorrent header. Of course, it's possible to fool these, too, but port 80 simply doesn't matter at all.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Stop playing World of Warcraft for five minutes and go socialize or take a walk.
Not applicable anymore. BitTorrent ports are randomized, and many clients set it to something weird out-of-the-box. Unless you're blocking everything except port 80, BT will easily slip past that.
It is possible to throttle BitTorrent, but not in the way you expect to.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
After three people or so are on Camfrog, without any sort of QOS, I'd expect a fourth person to start breaking up your video quality, especially if it was a torrent. I've seen bandwidth be almost saturated, ping times go up to 800 or 1000 ms, but it doesn't take that many round trips before BT will start pulling bandwidth back.
I'd love to test that on your network, but there's almost no chance I live anywhere near you. Oh well.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
In the coffee shop case, it sounds like they've decided not to take the steps to limit a customer's use. That's understandable since they likely don't have the expertise in-house, it's not central to their business and it probably works ok much of the time. Of course, limiting a customer's bandwidth has nothing to do with Network Neutrality. NN is about limiting the abuse of monopoly or duopoly power.
From what I understand, one of the only effective ways of limiting a 3rd party's access to a common AP without any administration rights would be to use spoofed 802.11 packets with the offender's MAC Address to send disassociation packets that will reset their connection, possibly causing them to have to manually cause a reconnect, and definitely causing all of their connections to dump and go through the process of reassociation and getting a new IP even if their client will automatically reconnect.
P SESSID=62e86b03ba6476a407065a1ffec82800&topic=172. 0
http://homepages.tu-darmstadt.de/~p_larbig/wlan/
The above includes a number of programs related to or using aircrack-ng, one of which does this kind of disassociation and other nasty things. Due to driver issues I believe this kind of thing is only possibly in linux (*nix?) right now, and even then only with certain chipsets - the same ones that allow aircrack-ng's arpreplay attack. Out of the box the code will need to be changed to target only specific high usage MAC's - or there is code in the aircrack-ng base that does a disassociation as a "one off"
http://tinyshell.be/aircrackng/forum/index.php?PH
That is a thread on the aircrack forum discussing the tool on an older state to give you an idea of what it does out of the box. Note that running something like this is wholly anti-social, I trust you'll modify it appropriately and consider your actions carefully. I've never actually run this code base but I have every expectation that it would work as advertised - I have definitely disassociated 3rd party MAC's on wlans before and it does have the intended effect.
Discussions about shaping, QOS and traffic control are obviously the appropraite play for administrators, but I think your question was what to do as a user without any other access. This is completely unsuited for a provider. But since you asked about TCP resets - this will be dramatically more effective with no impact on the other users when modified to run in a single MAC targetted mode. Whether it's right to do it, well, you're a left to your own decision. I just thought you might appreciate a substantive reply instead of hand-wringing.
If you can find the guy running BitTorrent, ask him to lower his upload speed to something reasonable, like 26k. When I first started using BitTorrent, it would kill my network because it was flooding my UPSTREAM. (When your upstream is flooded, you can't initiate a connection to a web server.) By turning my upload speed to something managable, all of my problems went away. (Heck, I can even talk on my Vonage while downloading a busy torrent at full tilt.)
No, I will not work for your startup
You could tunnel to a pc at home and just ping of death the guy to take the bandwidth for your tunnel.
Applying policies to UDP/TCP ports is just so stupid.