Bandwidth Hogger

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hi people

There are three people on our network, me and one person use xbox live a fair bit, but the other person uses bit comet and bearshare etc, which you can guess hogs the line and creates terrible lag when playing an online game etc.

Now my question is , is there a program i could use that could tell me what programs are being used, and therefore i could ban them, by listing them on the routers web pages as blocked sites?? i dont know the actual names of the p2p sites hes using, the names ussed aree just fro example.

Thanks.

Ed

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I assume this is a SOHO set-up? You could use something like the Linksys WRT54G device and stick the open source os on there.
This will give you a fair bit of control for the price.

 

If this other person pays for some of the broadband subscription, its hardly fair to deny him the ability to use the service in the manner he wishes to use it. Its not very fair to just block his access to the sites/applications he wants to use.

On the other hand, its not very fair of him to hog the bandwidth, using more than his fair share, and dampening your experience.

What you really need to do, rather than resorting to measures like sniffing packets, and blocking his access, is call a house meeting, and discuss it with everyone. Explain the effects of his use of these to him, and the three of you hammer out some sort of agreement about where you each compromise a little and get the best all-round solution. I guarantee that if you start getting pissy about it, and just blocking him he will do the same back. Relations between you all will seriously degrade.

Of course, if he isnt paying a share of the service, and is just making use of a service you (and/or your other flatmate) are paying for, then you can block away. After all, if hes not prepared to pay a share for a service hes making use of, then he has no say in how it is governed, or the priorities of the service.

 

No he is paying for it and calling a house meeting, well ive tried that but it never comes off. Ive tried with that state of the house and about the net problem, but the notes i leave just get ignored. I dont mind him using the net for any dowloading that he does, but instead of using it then switching it off, hell leave it on and basically downloads just for the sake of it.

Ed

 

Yeah I know scenarios like that.

Well, like I said, if he aint paying, go for it. I just wanted to make sure you werent just going for the technical solution, before trying the 'soft' option.

Another thread mentioned Cain and Abel(?) as a packet sniffer. you could probably use that. If you wanted to restrict access entirely for him (or even entirely restrict it at certain times), most routers allow some level of functionality of this based on IP or Mac of the machine. If its IP, then you just need to set a static IP for his machine.

 

could he not just schedule his downloads to run at convenient times ie when everyones at work or through the night (when folk are sleeping). most torrent downloaders should have this capability I believe..

 

Assuming hes reasonable and contributing to the cost there is no need to stop the guy accessing these sites. just ask him to limit his up and down speed. This can be set in bitcomet and probably all torrent client clients for that matter.

Just explain the situation to him and if he's an arse about it or you dont like him hand his ass to FACT

 

If you router has it can you not use QOS to specify that p2p ports have low priority and your xbox ports have a higher one.

 

If he's using torrents then tell him to cut his upload. Sure, it'll make him become a "leecher" but he'll still be downloading. In my experience it's the uploading that can hog significant amounts of bandwidth slowing your internet right down. Tell him to continue his downloads at full speed but try setting an upload limit on his torrent client to 5-10% of it's maximum. Then try the internet - I bet it'll be a lot better!

 

Most SoHo routers won't have this, but Boycey's suggestion about third-party firmwares may well be applicable
to your router. Its not just Linksys routers (though in my experience, they rule!) that allow you to flash firmware - for instance the DD-WRT firmware (the one I generally run on most SoHo environments I support) is compatible with many different vendors' products. Check out this link for a list of compatible hardware.

Some other third party firmwares you might want to check out are OpenWRT and Tomato

 

I've always been a little wary about replacing the firmware on my router (although in this case, none of those options work for me - I've got a netgear DG834).

Not really sure why. How reliable are the firmwares? And how easy is it to restore back to default if it hits the fan?

 

I had an unfortunate "housemate" when I was at uni, he had the ADSL USB modem attached to his computer and would limit the bandwidth for everyone else just so he could download whatever he wanted. It was a 512k connection at the time, and I remember him having the gall to moan at one of the others in the house when he couldn't get the speed he wanted.

Unfortunately, this won't help you situation, rest assured it happens from the most innocent of people!!

 

its there no way of making downgrading that port to 10mbs?

 

I really hated it when my flatmates (3 of them) start downloading torrents. Normally while they are waiting for their game, movie etc to download, they video chat with skype or stream multiple movies on youku and megavideo.
Two of my flatmates would normally leave their downloads on all the time and one of them would stay awake all night ensuring that the internet was used without rest This made simple things like checking my email almost impossible. To make things worse, my ISP carries out bandwidth throttling to the top 5% of users in an area. This is effective for 5 hours after peak times if your hit by it; which was always in our case.

They never listened to my pleas to stop downloading so one day I had enough.

I accessed the router (netgear) which doesnt have QoS and set up an access list and started training them by removing offenders from the access list for one week .

This stopped two of them from downloading but not streaming HD.

Next to stop the last guy downloading i blocked all ports except 80 & 443 to everyone exept me,[payback biatches]
If they tried to bypass this by connecting via LAN (we all connect wirelessly) I blocked all torrent sites, video sites and skype with the inbuilt firewall to the offender sitting in the hall with our only short LAN cable.

REVENGE IS SWEET cause now I'm the one downloading and streaming and they are not 8 months of hell is finally over!!!!

 

brainnssssssssssss - Congratulations on the necropost.

 

<checks for creeping spiders>

You dont say what service, but perhaps upgrade it? Virgin Media are doing some good deals at the moment (as are the DSL providers).

Then invest in something to make sure you have the benefit.

 

I've got a router, I don't know what it's called, but it allows you to adjust how much bandwidth each computer is allotted, adjust
bandwidth allotments according to how much each roommate pays and your all set, also, if this flatmate is downloading torrents,
they're probably illegal so you can just report him/her to the police.

 

Way to necro post, oh and get off your high horse about torrents probably being illegal, there are a lot that aren't (loads of *nix distros, World of Warcraft updates etc). Just remind me not to have you as a house mate

 

I know the BT Router has something called Port Forwarding, You can adjust the setting so that certain devices get the data coming from the internet before other devices.

Not much help if you dont have a BT router tho