Idea: Limit Internet Bandwidth

[vinayakjoshi]

Hi

I have a seven year old son who hogs all the bandwidth at our home WIFI network playing games and makes browsing for others absolutely miserable. We have a WIFI router connected to the broadband connection. I understand there are several options if one routes the internet connections through a server, however since the setup is at home, all of us connect to the router.

It would be great if a software be developed that limits the bandwidth on his computer to say 100kbps so that others also get some bandwidth for their use. :-)

I have tried netlimiter but it advertises its presence by pop-ups and a tray icon and my son is smart enough to catch and remove this.

However I can easily install and include the program in his startup files and he will not notice.

Can anyone help?

Thanks
Vinayak

[skwire]

Does your WiFi router have any sort of traffic shaping options on it?  Depending on the brand, it may be called QoS (Quality of Service) as well.

[vinayakjoshi]

Does your WiFi router have any sort of traffic shaping options on it?  Depending on the brand, it may be called QoS (Quality of Service) as well.

-skwire (August 30, 2011, 08:09 AM)

It does, but they are IP address driven (I think). And our IP addresses keep on changing depending upon the order in which we connect our devices to the router.

[skwire]

our IP addresses keep on changing depending upon the order in which we connect our devices to the router.

-vinayakjoshi (August 30, 2011, 08:13 AM)

Check your router for a static DHCP option.  This will allow you to assign static IPs to your devices via each of your network card's MAC addresses.

[vinayakjoshi]

Check your router for a static DHCP option.  This will allow you to assign static IPs to your devices via each of your network card's MAC addresses.

-skwire (August 30, 2011, 08:22 AM)

Ok, and then what should I do next?

[lotusrootstarch]

QOS or Static IP will not fix, or even alleviate your problems... they are irrelevant in this scenario. Things like BitTorrent, eMule, or even multi-threaded http downloads do not give a shit whether you have QOS or not.

"Per user/ip/mac bandwidth limit" function is what you need but it is rarely implemented on stock firmware for consumer-grade routers/gateways.

I suggest that you get a DD-WRT/Tomato compatible router from somewhere like eBay and flash the stock firmware with the "Third-Party" firmware.

No offence but be warned you'll need to a little bit geeky to do the above, forget it if your son knows more about wireless routers than you do.

[vinayakjoshi]

I suggest that you get a DD-WRT/Tomato compatible router from somewhere like eBay and flash the stock firmware with the "Third-Party" firmware.

-lotusrootstarch (August 31, 2011, 01:00 AM)

Thanks, but I was hoping there would be a software solution. Maybe something like an autohotkey script that changes the Windows settings so that the bandwidth used is only upto a certain speed. Is that possible at all? Doesn't the Windows OS give any way to control the bandwidth at all?

[lotusrootstarch]

Possible. But it'd be too easy to bypass, and too complicated to enforce/monitor. A simple system restore point might defeat all your efforts in minutes, and that probably does not even take him to ask around.

No point even try it that's what I'm saying.

[lotusrootstarch]

Search for "tomato router" on ebay...