I'm currently sharing an Optus Cable connection with my two flatmates. I'm loving the speed, when it's there ><

You see, one of my flatmates is downloading heaps during the free DL time between 1am and 7am. Just when I like to play WoW... He's hogging up all the bandwidth, to the point where just surfing is about as fast as 56k dial-up. Not happy, Jan. WoW is unplayable at 4000ms latency.

So, my question is: What can I do? Is there any way i can make sure i get a fair share of bandwidth so i could at least play WoW or surf at a speed that doesn't make me want punch my monitor (I'm aware of how little that would acheive). Are there any programs out there that could help? Or is there some settings i could change in the router?

Depends what program he uses to download. If he uses a BT client then it shouldnt be hard to limit how fast he downloads and uploads. If you have a server setup you can install certain program(s) that can limit the flow of data on selected ip address. If you cant do anything then your last choice is to unplug him when he is asleep.

By the way, when we were with optus we found the upload speeds eat our bandwithd like a crack whore eating crack.

Netlimiter is one program, either that get a decent router to control speeds via mac address or make a linux box......or turn his computer off while he is asleep.

id the downstream is unlimited, but upstream isnt, get him to cap his upstream, because that is what kills it for anyone else wanting to use it. i have the same issues here, my roomate is too thick to admit it, but task manager monitoring the upstram rate is telling me other things.

i use a program call softperfect bandwidth manager, and i own his connection bigtime, and he's too stupid to realise.

haha no way, I had the exact same problem in reverse.

we had 512k telstra adsl, my flatmate played WoW 24x7 and whenever I went to use the 'net for something, he would have a go at me for 'lagging him'.

I actually moved out of that place 2 days ago because I got sick of the a******.
we nearly came close to punch ups on one occasion because I just said 'stick it up your arse' after it got to the point where he said I'm not allowed to use the net at all because its in his name, even though I paid my third.

the joys of share living!

Yeah I have had that problem in the past and the only soluton to the problem is to get your own net connection If you allready have optus get your own telstra connection.

do NOT use bandwidth limiter ffs. Bandwidth limiter works on the local system and only limits at the software level.

Go here and download Bandwidth controller and run it allong side windows ICS to allocate whatever you want per person at a TCP layer level.

This means if you have 1500/512 adsl you could allocate 500/170 each user and no one could choke anyone else. (I know you dont have adsl its just an example)

If you want an easy to use BSD based bigpond capable solutions with web gui and all the trimmings I would suggest m0n0wall or what I use but is a litte harder to setup pfSence. They all allow you to allocate MAC or IP's certain bandwidth. These are just like smoothwall in that you dont have to enter commands like in a normal BSD or LINUX box you simply install it on the router machine and use your web browser to access the box and administer it.

You see the problem with local layer programs like net limiter is that they only take 'readings' and adjust every second or a bit less then that, so when you use a program like dumeter you can clearly see that even know a mac or user on your lan has been allocated 6kB/s upload just say they can in fact use more then 6kB as second in a 'burst transfer' so the upload will 'spike' above 6 and choke your other downloads. This a poor implemntation.

Us business sys admins require a firmer grip of data flow and bottlenecks so an application layer solution is not advised, especially when users have access to there controll settings like they do in bandwidth limiter.

last edited by James at 12:02:24 25/Feb/05

last edited by James at 12:09:33 25/Feb/05

You business sys admins would know that its a home network, and smoothwall is controlled via a web interface, not a command line.

Eds thats what James said in his post it pays to read things twice before slandering

Ps he edited his post min's before you posted so you could have read a different version

My edits were only spelling and grammer. I dont know what Eds is on about? Maybe he feals insecure because I deal with it in a corporate environment.

Pffft, you and 99% of other people on this board would kill for my job.

Apoligies but I read it as unlike smoothwall it is controlled by a web interface. I dont know if you edited or I read it wrong, but we shall drop it eh.

do NOT use bandwidth limiter ffs. Bandwidth limiter works on the local system and only limits at the software level.

who gives a flying monkey turd? if it does the job, use it. hardware flow control may just be fine and dandy for businesses where you can have a dedicated internet sharing machine that can limit each connection, but in a home environment it may not always be a viable option. In such cases a software solution may be needed.

What would be the best option, to be limiting one program on that one machine, netlimiter fails at it =/

Did you get the latest version and did you restart after loading it?

Has worked fine for me when Azureus's upload cap didnt work properly

Thank you all heaps for the help. Is there anything i can do client side? I we're all just hooked up to a router and I don't have access to it.

Client side (On his computer) try net limiter to limit his data. Its not failsafe and not the most effective method but it should work okay for what you want to do.