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?"

Comments

Steps for getting bandwidth

[Kadin2048]

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!

That's not the question

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:That's not the question

[Ex Machina]

The excellent network attack package dsniff has a really cool utility tcpnice that may help.

Short answer: No.

[Stavr0]

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.

Re:Short answer: No.

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Exactly what I was going to say. A free wifi network is NOT your network. Just because someone else is being a asshat doesn't mean you need to be one as well.

Re:Short answer: No.

[Erwos]

The guy who sent in the question may not appreciate EVDO or HSDPA, because, IIRC, latencies are much higher. While this isn't a big deal for web or email usage, it's going to be painful on WoW.

Then again, if the business is paying for it, that's quite acceptable.

Re:Short answer: No.

[arglesnaf]

What you find many times if you talk to a Hotel Manager or Coffee shop owner they realize it is a problem and have no way to deal with it. They will tell you they wish they had an easy way to throttle these people, without investing in things like inline IPS / bandwidth management.

Most of my clientel is small city midwest, and EVDO is not an option.

At the hospital I am at today the IT security people think it is a great idea. Since they outsource their wireless management and the provider refuses to deal with it, they think using a wireless IPS like solution to limit hogs is their only way to fix it.

I came up with the idea to ask slashdot after talking to my Hospital client and the manager of the hotel I normally stay at. Abusing the network by eating all the bandwidth is not someones right, and not all wireless providers are capeable of ensuring equitable wireless access.

Re:Short answer: No.

[CXI]

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?"

When you want to know about the correct way to do it, you ask about QoS and other bandwidth limiting methods. You do NOT, as you've done, talk about TCP resets and "automated sniff and reset strategy".

Re:What if you're the network admin?

[Yonder Way]

Use OpenBSD as your gateway OS and set up queues so that BitTorrent is allowed on its well known ports, but carve out dedicated bandwidth as well for other services like imap, smtp, http, https, etc. to make sure they always have priority over torrents. You can prioritize the queues so that interactive services like ssh and http/https will pre-empt bandwidth from bulk transfer services like BitTorrent and ftp. The amount of control you have with pf is any geek's dream. You can even go so far as to say that hosts running Windows get put in a lower priority queue than hosts running anything else. :)

I suggest

[Acy James Stapp]

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.

*chuckle*

[TrebleJunkie]

...ya bitch about The Next Guy hogging your bandwidth, and yet most of you clamour for "Net Neutrality."

Irony.... glooooorious irony.

lower your mtu or go to starbucks

[ufnoise]

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.

Spoof some ARP packets

[haydenth]

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.

Okay...

[LWATCDR]

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...

Sounds like that's the solution.

[Kadin2048]

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?

I'm an Student...

[UnifiedTechs]

"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?"