If you can put a bandwidth limit on services, do so during peak hours only, then for over downloaders, throttle by user, not by service.
It's more fair, because it's the nature of most routers to proportion bandwidth by number of open tcp connections, not by IP address. The same thing happens to most commercial and enterprise class routers, not just the little Linksys paperweight that someone may have at home. This is one reason to add a specific per-address bandwidth restriction in a coffee shop. The nature of the system is that the single pig whose bit torrent program opens 200 connections at once gets as much bandwidth on the system as everyone else combined who is just reading the news and checking their stock quotes.
Essentially what you do is offer a guaranteed speed of half a megabit per second, and a max of 6Mbps (example) and as soon as the user passes a 50GB peak hours quota, cut him down to 1Mbps (or even to the 500kbps figure) until 9PM. This would probably solve the problem for the most part. It will force people to reevaluate the times they choose for their large downloads (unless they have to be done at a certain time), encourage those who really should be paying for a larger package to do so, and not degrade specific services. Bandwidth shaping systems are really problematic. It's best to just limit traffic by user.
I've been in the IT field for a number of years as an independent. I work as a semi-resident IT person for some companies on some days, generally one or two four hour days per week, and for other companies on an on-call basis. I've never seen the need to actually insult someone, though I must admit to having been less than diplomatic at times (lectures usually).
Unfortunately, the world is fraught with those who do not care what they do, that what they do is stupid, that there are others who may be affected by their stupid actions, and the like.
Let me relate a story to you, from personal experience. I used to do the (company is now out of business) IT work for mortgage broker for a few years a while back. This is the story of one day I was there.
The day starts with a telephone call that of the computers there is "like popping up all the time". I answered with some or other dry humor remark which now escapes me, regarding the computer physically popping up off of the desk. I have never understood why people speak in such an idiotic manner. They flaunt their vagueness, their lack of knowledge. The computer doesn't pop up! Perhaps a message is appearing, or maybe an advertisement. Maybe the optical drive keeps opening for no reason. Or maybe it's turning itself on when it shouldn't be. The point is, I don't know. Different stupid people use the same phrase to mean different things, none of them quite correct.
It turned out that a message of some sort was appearing. The person who called me, the same person who saw the message, didn't remember what it was. He didn't remember if it was an advertisement, a warning notice, a network message. "I don't know, I just closed it when it came up. I don't know what it said. It's happened a few times this morning" was his description of the message.
The conversation with him was useless, so I scheduled a time to come in, even though I was free for the entire day, for later that afternoon.
Upon arriving, I discovered that the computer had a couple of pieces of adware on it. Nothing serious, nothing that I could qualify describing as Spyware. The computer took about half an hour to totally straighten out. (Don't forget, this is before the days of this stuff really embedding it in your system!) I found that it all came from a multitude of screen savers and desktop additions (useless toys) that he had downloaded from a website which offered that sort of thing. By website, I don't mean something like Digital Blasphemy or Shifted Reality, who are totally trustworthy. It was something along the lines of "freescreensaver.com" or "freedesktopgarbage.com" type sites.
I explained what had caused the problems, and the repeated advertisements, to the user. He claimed to understand.
After finishing up everything, I was speaking to the boss/manager/whatever who was in charge, explaining what happened, approximately what I did to rectify the situation, and was just about to present the bill when I saw out of the corner of my eye that the idiot user was downloading something or other. I walked over to investigate, and found that it was some other kind of junkware, supposedly a desktop background, but packaged as an exe file. I reached over and depressed the ESC key (cancels download under Explorer or old versions of Netscape), then reiterated my earlier mini-lecture about downloading any kind of program from non trustworthy sites, and pointed out that it was a program, not a picture he was downloading. His responses were "Yeah I know but it's free! And it's only a picture so who cares?" I said "Great. Well, my services aren't," and pointed out that it was a program, not just a picture as he had stated. His explanation was "Yeah but you just open it and it installs itself for you."
I settled the bill with the boss and left. The user was there for less than two more months before being fired for causing problems with the computers through the installation of non work related items.
Sorry, everyone, about the terrible presentation of this story, I'm quite tired
Slashdot Mirror
If you can put a bandwidth limit on services, do so during peak hours only, then for over downloaders, throttle by user, not by service. It's more fair, because it's the nature of most routers to proportion bandwidth by number of open tcp connections, not by IP address. The same thing happens to most commercial and enterprise class routers, not just the little Linksys paperweight that someone may have at home. This is one reason to add a specific per-address bandwidth restriction in a coffee shop. The nature of the system is that the single pig whose bit torrent program opens 200 connections at once gets as much bandwidth on the system as everyone else combined who is just reading the news and checking their stock quotes. Essentially what you do is offer a guaranteed speed of half a megabit per second, and a max of 6Mbps (example) and as soon as the user passes a 50GB peak hours quota, cut him down to 1Mbps (or even to the 500kbps figure) until 9PM. This would probably solve the problem for the most part. It will force people to reevaluate the times they choose for their large downloads (unless they have to be done at a certain time), encourage those who really should be paying for a larger package to do so, and not degrade specific services. Bandwidth shaping systems are really problematic. It's best to just limit traffic by user.
Wow. I'm too tired to pay attention to the formatting too.
Sorry.
I've been in the IT field for a number of years as an independent. I work as a semi-resident IT person for some companies on some days, generally one or two four hour days per week, and for other companies on an on-call basis. I've never seen the need to actually insult someone, though I must admit to having been less than diplomatic at times (lectures usually). Unfortunately, the world is fraught with those who do not care what they do, that what they do is stupid, that there are others who may be affected by their stupid actions, and the like. Let me relate a story to you, from personal experience. I used to do the (company is now out of business) IT work for mortgage broker for a few years a while back. This is the story of one day I was there. The day starts with a telephone call that of the computers there is "like popping up all the time". I answered with some or other dry humor remark which now escapes me, regarding the computer physically popping up off of the desk. I have never understood why people speak in such an idiotic manner. They flaunt their vagueness, their lack of knowledge. The computer doesn't pop up! Perhaps a message is appearing, or maybe an advertisement. Maybe the optical drive keeps opening for no reason. Or maybe it's turning itself on when it shouldn't be. The point is, I don't know. Different stupid people use the same phrase to mean different things, none of them quite correct. It turned out that a message of some sort was appearing. The person who called me, the same person who saw the message, didn't remember what it was. He didn't remember if it was an advertisement, a warning notice, a network message. "I don't know, I just closed it when it came up. I don't know what it said. It's happened a few times this morning" was his description of the message. The conversation with him was useless, so I scheduled a time to come in, even though I was free for the entire day, for later that afternoon. Upon arriving, I discovered that the computer had a couple of pieces of adware on it. Nothing serious, nothing that I could qualify describing as Spyware. The computer took about half an hour to totally straighten out. (Don't forget, this is before the days of this stuff really embedding it in your system!) I found that it all came from a multitude of screen savers and desktop additions (useless toys) that he had downloaded from a website which offered that sort of thing. By website, I don't mean something like Digital Blasphemy or Shifted Reality, who are totally trustworthy. It was something along the lines of "freescreensaver.com" or "freedesktopgarbage.com" type sites. I explained what had caused the problems, and the repeated advertisements, to the user. He claimed to understand. After finishing up everything, I was speaking to the boss/manager/whatever who was in charge, explaining what happened, approximately what I did to rectify the situation, and was just about to present the bill when I saw out of the corner of my eye that the idiot user was downloading something or other. I walked over to investigate, and found that it was some other kind of junkware, supposedly a desktop background, but packaged as an exe file. I reached over and depressed the ESC key (cancels download under Explorer or old versions of Netscape), then reiterated my earlier mini-lecture about downloading any kind of program from non trustworthy sites, and pointed out that it was a program, not a picture he was downloading. His responses were "Yeah I know but it's free! And it's only a picture so who cares?" I said "Great. Well, my services aren't," and pointed out that it was a program, not just a picture as he had stated. His explanation was "Yeah but you just open it and it installs itself for you." I settled the bill with the boss and left. The user was there for less than two more months before being fired for causing problems with the computers through the installation of non work related items. Sorry, everyone, about the terrible presentation of this story, I'm quite tired