P2P Traffic Shaping For Home Use? 288
An anonymous reader writes "My housemate uses an aggressive P2P client, that when in use makes the Internet unusable for everyone else connected to the network. After hearing about various ISPs shaping traffic to reduce P2P traffic, I was wondering if there was a solution for managing P2P traffic on a home network. I have a Linksys WRT54G available for hacking. Can Slashdot recommend a way to reduce the impact of P2P on my network and make it usable again?"
Buy another Linksys and link them. (Score:2, Interesting)
Just speak to him! (Score:5, Interesting)
So I spoke to him, you know - in a rational way. It's now scheduled for the nights & days when we're either asleep or at work with a few hours in between & most of the weekends where it's either throttled down to 10k/s (by uTorrent) or stopped completely.
On top of that we've got a Smoothwall box with packet prioritization for ssh/web/email/im etc. but no bandwidth throttling.
At the end of the day, if you cant come to an agreement then it's probably just gonna get worse for you two and there's nothing you can do to stop him being an asshole.
Re:Just speak to him! (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a housemate who ran P2P software all the time without even realizing it. Talking to him did nothing. Limiting the number of outbound packets from his computer to a certain number per second with a fairly high burst solved the problem. He liked playing WoW and when his WoW connection started getting all weird and I told him it was his P2P sofware he started to make sure it wasn't running. The average cap I set was plenty enough for WoW and enough for a decent download speed for P2P as well.
I'm all for bandwidth throttling and traffic shaping as long as it's to ensure usage fairness. If I were running an ISP I would have a per-customer 5 minute bandwidth meter and customers who had exceeded their share for 5 minutes would have all their traffic dropped to the lowest priority until there was a 5 minute interval in which they hadn't exceeded their share.
And it would be share of total pipe available to the ISP's upstreams, not some arbitrary fixed cap per customer. If the P2P application were written to favor connecting to other customers of the ISP that would be a way to avoid the re-prioritization completely.
Linksys and QoS (Score:1, Interesting)
Hope that helps
DD-WRT vs X-Wrt (Score:2, Interesting)
the simplest fix (Score:3, Interesting)
This is true up to a point. It should be easy to get the offending roommate to cap their bandwidth, but it should also be easy to install a traffic-shaping router (though sadly it's not), and then the problem would be solved without having to get the cooperation of everyone (and every program on every computer) on the network, and for everyone to be constantly self-policing their own network usage.
To solve the problem in one place at a higher layer of abstraction will be more likely to prevent the problem from recurring in a different form later on.
Of course, being on friendly terms with your roommates about these sorts of issues is more important than how the problem is ultimately resolved.
Re:Need more input! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How about ask? (Score:2, Interesting)
Is this really so complicated? (Score:2, Interesting)
When did people get so afraid of each other?
PM
gluttony at both ends of the stack (Score:2, Interesting)
This is like the wink wink nod nod industry. The big pipe providers (in the US) though already got paid 200 billion dollars to roll out true high speed internet all over and did about bupkis with it [newnetworks.com] except squabble over the low hanging profitable fruit in some select areas. The bulk of the nation gets grade C alleged broadband or not even that. Cry me a river of crocodile tears, like the auto industry in the US saying they can't make high MPG cars when they *sell* high MPG cars in Europe. In short, always read between the lines when big corporations bitch about stuff. It's just *cheaper* for them to do "throttling, packet shaping, and simply capping the bandwidth." than it is to actually, you know, improve the infrastructure from end to end. The fatcats Cxx whatevers and big pirate wallstreet "investors" ain't happy being millionaires anymore, nope, that ain't enough, they all got to be *billionaires* now and the only way to do that is to screw their customers over and bribe off government so they can get away with it.
Frankly, being on dialup and being told directly by the lineman when they ran out new phone wire when I moved in here that they would *never* install anything good enough for DSL unless ordered to by the government (that is an exact quote when I asked him him if I could now get dsl and he was a smug and condescending ass about it too, BTW, near giggling over being able to screw a customer by charging for tissue paper phone lines with constant buzz and noise and crappy connections), I have little sympathy for the monopoly broadband folks and the entrenched telco cartels. I also have little sympathy for that roomate who was hogging what was available, and offered two fast solutions to that exact problem, because I have been in that situation with roomates and that is what we did, multiple lines, problem solved. If that crap-geting full seasons of the simpsons dubbed in japanese-is so important to someone, that they have to leech 24/7, let them get their own freeking line, that's what an adult would do anyway (loosely used term for anyone who would actually do that of course..seems rather silly to me, and the other roomate who I guess the net connections name is in is leaving him or herself open to getting *popped* by the the MAFIAA some day, another boneheaded decision). But if the telco folks would have their feet held to the fire by the government and the FCC the US could be on top and not like number 16 in the developed world for decent net connectivity, and then everyone might have some decent throughput and bandwith.
Most places, if its cable, they've been there for years and have been milking a granted local monopoly with zero competition (and I remember before they even started, sat through a county commission hearing when they promised "no commercials, really, trust us!"). If it is the phone company, they've been mostly milking the same wires they strung up when alex bell was running things. I grew up with the "one" phone company and their pure asshattery corporate mindset, and I can tell you, it never went away even after they were allegedly "broken up", it's just a cartel now instead of one company. All that money they got went someplace, but a whole heaping pile of that 200 billion did not go into the last mile solution very many places except at the bare minimum possible level they could claim was "broadband".
Re:Might not even be necessary (Score:1, Interesting)