P2P Traffic Shaping For Home Use?

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?"

Need more input!

[UncleTogie]

I have a Linksys WRT54G available...

Which version? Check the model tag, it should say there...

Re:Need more input!

[Divebus]

Simple - take a BIG HAMMER to his computer.

Re:

[djdavetrouble]

I was thinking electromagnet for some traffic shaping...
Heeeeeere data data data.....

Re:

[Charcharodon]

I took the BIG Hammer to the roommate, nothing wrong with the computer.

Re:

[srlapo]

I have a Linksys wrt54g v8 and it has some good QoS options with the native firmware. You can restrict usage and bandwith by mac address, by the ethernet port your roomie's computer is connected to, or even the classic, by the tcp port. You can also set or deny different services depending on the time of day, and computer using them too.

Build a Better firewall...

[binaryspiral]

Even the most expensive residential router chokes on the shear number of connections your average P2P client tries to maintain.

I modified my WRT54G's setting to be just a wireless access point and switch by disabling the DHCP server - then built a cheap Smoothwall firewall using an old P3 800Mhz with a pair of pci nics.

DSL -> Smoothwall -> LAN Port 1 on WRT54

Leaving the WAN port unused, I still have three ports for wired PCs (nearly unlimited with the addition of more switches) and wireless works with

Re:

[STrinity]

Model number doesn't really matter -- go into the router configuration, assign his computer a permanent IP on the LAN, then block the common P2P ports for his IP. Then password lock the router and stuff some gum in the reset button.

Re:Need more input!

[mrmeval]

I had a REV 8 linksys and it would be perfect as it LOCKS up on max bandwidth. The internal webserver also crashed and it won't take open source firmware. I got a good one when I bought a Buffalo that rocks, just before a texas judge stopped their product from being sold here.

DD-WRT would do that easily. It can do it to wireless as well. Look for a compatible router, preferably one that can take a full install and strangle their link. ;)

http://www.dd-wrt.com/ [dd-wrt.com]

Re:Need more input!

[UncleTogie]

Can you expand on this? Something like "if the version happens to be xxx then you could do foo, if the version happens to be yyy then you could do bar..."

Good point. How 'bout a wikipedia link for the WRT54G, [wikipedia.org] with entries on available firmware?

Re:Need more input!

[mrsteveman1]

Any WRT54G model before v5 can be modified easily, v5+ can sometimes be modified with DD-WRT. And of course they still sell the GL, which is quite worth the price ($60 on amazon) because of how useful it becomes with this alternate firmware. The GL can also be modified and has the advantage of still being sold under a clear model number, so you know you can mod it, unlike others.

On the other hand, there is awesome shaping available in tomato firmware, it can classify traffic and show you what percentage of your traffic was in each class.

http://www.polarcloud.com/img/ssqosc108.png [polarcloud.com]
http://www.polarcloud.com/img/ssqosg108.png [polarcloud.com]
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato [polarcloud.com]

Re:

[garbletext]

To hack a wrt54g, you either need an old one (v1-3, I believe) or the hacker friendly WRT54GL. The newer versions don't run linux.

Re:

[morari]

DD-WRT can be flashed onto just about any WRT54G nowadays. You loose a few features with the newer version though, as the storage space isn't as large as it once was.

For the tiny bit of extra money however, the GL is definitely worth it in terms of hacking.

OpenWRT requirements

[j1m+5n0w]

OpenWRT hardware requirements [openwrt.org] If it's version 4.0 or earlier (or the L model), it has enough RAM and flash (16MB, 4MB respectively) to run OpenWRT, or other wrt54g-friendly distributions. (OpenWRT is pretty cool; it has an olsrd package you can install from the web configurator, and with a little bit of effort you can make an ad-hoc mesh. Not useful for traffic shaping, but interesting nonetheless. I expect there are probably tools available to do traffic shaping with OpenWRT as well, I just never needed to mess with that.)

Re:

[WanderingGhost]

OpenWRT comes with QoS scripts that will help you prioritize packets. I installed it and now P2P never interferes with HTTP, DNS and other traffic.

Re:Need more input!

[Shakrai]

but you want to tell everything you know about "P2P traffic shaping for home use" and be useful to more people.

This won't be directly helpful to the submitter (he's working with a WRT54G), but this is how I do it in Linux. Set up the shaping rules with tc. Classify traffic with iptables. Examples follow:

(in /etc/ppp/ip-up -- would likely be rc.local or similar file for a cable modem user who doesn't use ppp)

# ADSL connection is 832,000 bits/s on upload.
#
# We rate limit to 632,320 bits/s (76%) to account for ATM/PPPoE/IP protocol overhead.
#
# This is broken up as follows:
#
# 72,000 bits/s for TCP Acks (keep our downloads fast even if upload is pegged)
# 35,000 bits/s for interactive packets (icmp echo/reply, tcp syns, network time protocol, small ssh packets -- only small ones so we don't prioritize scp transfers)
# 236,500 bits/s for priority traffic (traffic to my work VPN)
# 236,500 bits/s for normal traffic (this is the default)
# 35,000 bits/s for low priority traffic (udp trackers in bittorrent)
# 35,000 bits/s for idle priority traffic (bittorrent uploads)

/sbin/tc qdisc add dev $1 root handle 1: htb default 50
/sbin/tc class add dev $1 parent 1: classid 1:1 htb rate 632320bit ceil 632320bit
/sbin/tc class add dev $1 parent 1:1 classid 1:20 htb prio 1 rate 72000bit ceil 632320bit quantum 1454
/sbin/tc class add dev $1 parent 1:1 classid 1:30 htb prio 2 rate 35000bit ceil 632320bit quantum 1454
/sbin/tc class add dev $1 parent 1:1 classid 1:40 htb prio 3 rate 227660bit ceil 632320bit
/sbin/tc class add dev $1 parent 1:1 classid 1:50 htb prio 4 rate 227660bit ceil 632320bit
/sbin/tc class add dev $1 parent 1:1 classid 1:60 htb prio 5 rate 35000bit ceil 632320bit quantum 1454
/sbin/tc class add dev $1 parent 1:1 classid 1:70 htb prio 6 rate 35000bit ceil 632320bit quantum 1454

/sbin/tc qdisc add dev $1 parent 1:20 handle 20: sfq perturb 10
/sbin/tc qdisc add dev $1 parent 1:30 handle 30: sfq perturb 10
/sbin/tc qdisc add dev $1 parent 1:40 handle 40: sfq perturb 10
/sbin/tc qdisc add dev $1 parent 1:50 handle 50: sfq perturb 10
/sbin/tc qdisc add dev $1 parent 1:60 handle 60: sfq perturb 10
/sbin/tc qdisc add dev $1 parent 1:70 handle 70: sfq perturb 10

In order, those commands establish a htb scheduler [luxik.cdi.cz] with a celing of 632,320bit/s (you have to set this around 70-80% less than your actual upload to force the packets to queue at your box and not the dsl/cable modem), then establishs children underneth it for each class of traffic. The children will get AT LEAST the specified rate and when extra is available will borrow it according to their priority number. Prio 0 gets all extra bandwidth until satisifed or no more exists, then prio 1, prio 2, etc, etc.

The second set of commands attaches a fair queuing algorithm so individual connections within those classes will share the bandwidth (more) fairly.

From there it's just a matter of using iptables to classify the traffic. This example shoves all bittorrent traffic into the lowest queues. We assume that anything coming from 172.25.42.254 is bittorrent traffic because we add that as a second IP address on the client behind NAT and make Azureus bind to that IP (all other traffic goes out on the default IP).

iptables -t mangle -N LOW
iptables -t mangle -N IDLE
iptables -t mangle -A LOW -j CLASSIFY --set-class 1:60
iptables -t mangle -A LOW -j RETURN
iptables -t mangle -A IDLE -j CLASSIFY --set-class 1:70
iptables -t mangle -A IDLE -j RETURN
iptables -t mangle -A FORWARD -p udp -s 172.25.42.254 -j LOW
iptables -t mangle -A FORWARD -p udp -s 172.25.42.254 -j RETURN
iptables -t mangle -A FORWARD -p tcp -s 172.25.42.254 -j IDLE
iptables -t mangle -A FORWARD -p tcp -s 172.25.42.254 -j RETURN

Those commands

IPCop

[jcrousedotcom]

I use ipcop http://www.ipcop.org/ [ipcop.org] for my home network - it's all of about 40 megs (well it was, I see the new update is quite a bit bigger so I may be low on that figure) and can run on any old pc lying around.

It can do the traffic shaping you're wanting, plus, I found, especially when I am doing p2p downloading or some online gaming, my old netgear (very old) couldn't keep up and would drop packets. I saw my download speeds go up significantly and I have the opportunity to do traffic shaping if needed.

Re:

[mrbooze]

If for whatever reason you don't feel like taking the time to properly classify the problem packets, or if said housemate might be someone inclined to try and sneak around such things by tweaking his bittorrent settings, one simpler approach is to make all traffic lowest priority by default, and then you specifically define the important traffic to be higher priority. Just don't forget the really important stuff but sometimes less obvious stuff like DNS traffic.

Of course if you REALLY want to simply deal w

It's simple with OpenWrt

[Anonymous Coward]

Install OpenWrt, then:

ipkg install qos-scripts
vi /etc/config/qos
[ enter your linespeed in the right place ]

qos-start

Re:It's simple with OpenWrt

[corsec67]

Or install Tomato [polarcloud.com] and go to the QOS tab. It is pretty simple to get QOS going on Tomato

Re:

[Moridineas]

Seconded on tomato--really great dist!

How about ask?

[Alioth]

How about just nicely explaining the problem to him, and requests he runs his P2P stuff overnight when no one is using the connection?

If that doesn't work, well, his port on the switch might mysteriously fail during waking hours.

Re:How about ask?

[kesuki]

as opposed to using traffic shaping, you can force the guy to switch clients to azureus http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

in advanced mode, you can set upload and download maximums, if you plan on allowing this, and using latency specific online gaming, you should set the limits to HALF of what azureus is capable of without anyone using the internet.

All major clients, but it still requires talking..

[Nerobro]

I love how people pimp their own client. But nearly every PTP client I've touched, has bandwidth limiting. Some of them, uTorrent included, allows you to schedule your bandwidth.

The real problem here isn't traffic shaping, but about traffic courtesy. Your housemate may not know how much trouble their causing. Talk to them. Get them to set their max speeds to 1/2 or 1/4 of the available bandwidth.

They may be surprised when their OWN web browsing gets better.

Yet this does all hinge on you talking to said housemate. Go talk. I've had the "talk" and been the person talking to the housemate. It usually works out well.

Re:All major clients, but it still requires talkin

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

tell him that his .torrent-ing is adversely affecting your social life on WoW. He'll either understand, or not.

If not, just use some DPS and hide behind the couch....

the simplest fix

[j1m+5n0w]

The real problem here isn't traffic shaping, but about traffic courtesy.

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

Re:

[Lendrick]

It's not just a courtesy thing. You can solve a lot with traffic shaping and other configuration, allowing your roommate to maintain relatively high bittorrent speeds and still have a decent web surfing experience. The one thing, mentioned above, is QoS. The other thing you might want to look into is the size of your router's NAT table and its TCP timeouts. If your roommate has 500 concurrent TCP connections out of a possible 512, that's going to slow you way down. If, on the other hand, you're looking

Re:

[garbletext]

This is total bullshit. uTorrent is the most popular bittorrent client by far for a very good reason. It's the best win32 client available. It was bought by Bitorrent inc, and is now their official client, afaik. Provide a reliable site, please.

Re:

[VendettaMF]

"uTorrent no matter how many security professionals classify it as a Trojan horse."

Liar.

Re:

[kesuki]

"Tomato is the way to go, as half of the posters seem to be saying."

my original suggestion was to use smoothwall's QoS. but some people felt tomato would be better than a smoothwall setup, the only reason i like smoothwall is you don't need to flash a hardware router, and if you use an older PC it will use less power running smoothwall than it ever did running windows, for whatever reason any PC from the 486 on, always uses less power running free open source software than running windows, i think it's the

Re:

[Joe The Dragon]

utorrent can do the same with 50% or more less cpu load.

Re:

[urbanriot]

Please cite examples of uTorrent using 50% less CPU load than Azureus. And please, not 'omg lawl' forum posts by uTorrent fanboys.

Re:

[Vectronic]

That would be my suggestion aswell...

Besides, whatever client he is using, must have its own throttle, tell him/her to set it to like 75% of what the line can handle.

Some have timers too, so it can be 50/50 during multiple use, and 100% when he's the only one. Which is far easier than tweaking/hacking something you don't really use that often, and you may want to allow other software to use 100% (or as much as possible) on his machine (file sharing over the network, etc).

Re:

[nine-times]

Right. In fact, many P2P applications (at least bittorrent stuff) allows you to set max up/down rates. These can even be set on-the-fly, meaning you could let them download full-speed most of the time, but ask them nicely to throttle back when you're using the Internet. You know, like "Hey man, I'm trying to do something online, could you drop down to 20kbps for the next few hours?" Or whatever. Find a bitrate that won't hurt your usage

Unless your roommate is completely unreasonable, he'll go along w

Re:

[Chemisor]

> How about just nicely explaining the problem to him

This is not about discourtesy, it's about P2P's tendency to grab all the available bandwidth. I would, for one, like to have my browser's requests prioritized over my torrent traffic, so I could browse the net at a reasonable rate while downloading. Yes, I can set rate caps in uTorrent, but that is not the ideal solution because it leaves the network underutilized. My browser does not require much bandwidth, it requires latency, which is what the poste

Talk to your housemate

[Dolohov]

Seriously. An arms race is not going to solve your problem.

Re:Talk to your housemate

[ozamosi]

When I use bittorrent, I like to squeeze out as much bandwith as possible. However, I don't like when others get annoyed.

To fix the annoyance, I would have to limit my bandwidth usage at some times of the day - and I wouldn't just have to limit my usage according to when the other tenants are awake, and according to when they use how much bandwidth, but also according to how much bandwidth my ISP feels like giving me today (my ISP is seriously bandwidth starved).

If my router had good QoS, I wouldn't have to worry about annoying others, while still being able to use all spare bandwidth. I would definitely prefer this solution.

Re:

[eli2k]

If you are both roommates, and share the Internet, it is unfair for one person to disrupt things such that no one else can access the Internet. Otherwise make him pay for his own line and he can do whatever he wants. You don't all want to get in trouble, right?

Re:

[Geek of Tech]

Well, starting an arms race and finding out the other guy has you out-gunned: that won't help. Having one that'll knock his socks off though... Well, as that great philosopher once said "They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only need to fire once. That's how dad did it, that's how America does it, and it's worked out pretty well so far. -- Iron Man"

An Eviction Notice will do

[hackingbear]

This one may be more effective.

QoS

[llamalad]

Just set up QoS such that VOIP, SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, and whatever else you care about gets prioritized.

Re:

[bendodge]

Easy way: load DD-WRT onto your WRT54G and set his Ethernet port to a lower priority than everyone else. (Assuming he's using Ethernet.)

Re:

[Easy2RememberNick]

Lock down the router with a password and then put epoxy or superglue over the router reset button. If it's already protected reset it, put your own password there and then do all that.

  Even better hide the router inline where the cable comes into the house, they'll never know ;)

  FYI DD-WRT or Tomato are two good router firmware replacements.

Re:

[garbletext]

If your provider is Comcast this will not work. Comcast is my provider in two geographically disparate locations ans so much as running a torrent at very low speeds will destroy my connection in both places.

In the days of Napster

[eric76]

In the days of Napster, a nephew of mine spent a year living with me while going to college nearby.

His use of Napster would make the cable modem connection unusable. In response, I'd go to the home firewall device (had one of the early Linksys models) and block the traffic.

He thought the cable company was doing it.

Re:In the days of Napster

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, you could try talking to him, but then if he refuses it ruins the credability of the above plan somewhat.

Not at all. After he refuses to talk about it, you block his traffic then when he says something's up you say "Shit! I tried to talk to you about this but you wouldn't listen. I knew this would happen. The Cable Company must be fucking with our access. They've probably told the police too! Right... you hide in the attic until this blows over. I'll say you've fled to Brazil or something."

Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Beat the shit out of the fucker.

From the Slashdot crowd?

[Serenissima]

I'm sure the reaction of physical violence isn't one most Slashdot readers would take. All that heavy breathing would just tire us out too quickly.

Man up!

[zogger]

Tell this person to stop being a hog and to drop upload and download speeds so that other people can use the net. This is a social problem that doesn't need a techno fix. Either that or tell them to get their own connection, stop sharing it with them.

The social problems: eating it cause it's there

[Televiper2000]

Honestly, this is the reason ISPs are moving toward throttling, packet shaping, and simply capping the bandwidth. There's a minority of bit torrent users hoarding the bandwidth so that they can hoard piles and piles of movies, music, and games that they have no reasonable expectation of using. "hey check it out man, I have the entire Simpson's series dubbed in Japanese!"

get a PC with smoothwall linux

[kesuki]

you can put it between the router and the net if you're using the wireless capabilities.

a forum about traffic shaping with smoothwall

http://www.linux-noob.com/forums/index.php?s=dffc19493975498724b50564217f05e4&showtopic=3250&pid=11502&st=0&#entry11502 [linux-noob.com]

smoothwall linux
http://www.smoothwall.org/ [smoothwall.org]

Re:

[gobbo]

Linksys WRT54GL: $60
Tomato firmware update, plus config: 2 hours.

Oldie but goodie PC: $60 + energy hogging
linux, smoothwall: 5 hours
router: $40 + config time.

Difference in function: negligible for almost any home user... except the frankenlinksys will run for hours on a UPS, let you tweak your wireless output, cost less TCO, be silent, last longer, take less space, less brainpower, and less time, and be generally a more elegant and efficient solution for the OP.

Oh yeah, and it's still linux.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Switch to Comcast!

Re:

[OMNIpotusCOM]

LOL. You win, thread over.

1st off

[atarione]

a. 1st off and most importantly make sure the internet connection isn't in your name so you are not the one who gets sued by the RIAA b. go get DD-WRT (check your WRT54G version..later one's suck) then set up the traffic shaping QoS feature. http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Quality_of_Service [dd-wrt.com]

Re:

[atarione]

also... sorry should have thought of this before posting have u tried asking them nicely to configure their p2p client(s) in a more neighborly manner?

mmm, Tomato

[straponego]

I quite like Tomato firmware as well: http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato [polarcloud.com]

It also has QoS features, and a nice AJAX interface.

And after you install DD-WRT...

[Tau Neutrino]

In the Administration section, on the Management page, make some changes to the IP Filter Settings. Set the Maximum Ports to 4096 (the maximum), and the Timeout values for both TCP and UDP to 120 seconds.

Running Azureus used to kill all the other network activity on my LAN. These changes made all the difference in the world.

Re:

[dwater]

I'll tried setting Maximum Ports to 4096 and that made some difference, but not a lot. I'll try the Timeout ...checking...oh, it's already at 3600 seconds. Will reducing the values to 120 seconds have a positive effect (you don't say whether it's reducing or increasing that is important)?

I use DD-WRT on my WRT54G, and just using the QoS didn't make much different. My theory is that it isn't (just) the bandwidth that is the issue but the number of connections. I adjusted my client to reduce the number of con

Re:And after you install DD-WRT...

[Tau Neutrino]

You're right, I neglected to say which direction the timeout should go. It's definitely reduce the TCP and UDP timeout values to 120 seconds. One of the problems with P2P is establishing many connections to flaky systems or networks. Your client (and router hold the connection open, waiting for response that never comes. That fills up the connection table and makes it hard to establish other, more productive ones.

You want to reduce the time your router waits from 1 hour, as it's currently set, to two minutes.

Re:

[gEvil (beta)]

I've never used it, but I just thought I'd mention that the default WRT54G firmware from Linksys also has QoS settings that can be adjusted. I'm sure they're far more basic than what you'd get from some of the third party firmwares, but it's worth trying out for starters.

It sounds like the OP didn't even begin looking into any solutions before crying to slashdot with his roommate problems.

Buy another Linksys and link them.

[ITIL Prince]

My Linksys WRT54G is notorious for getting slower and slower over time when we use P2P here at the house. I found that rebooting it every day helped. Not even DD-WRT made that problem go away. I think the Linksys just didn't have enough "oomph" to do traffic shaping. There's an interesting solution I came up with - buy a second Linksys and flash it with DD-WRT. Turn on traffic shaping for all ports. Use the second Linksys as your Internet facing router, and leave the default firmware on it, but define the

Re:

[Angry Rooster]

When I bought a WRT54G I had the same problem... mine is v6. Apparently after v4 Linksys(or more accurately Cisco, who owns them) lowered the internal memory to lessen the effectiveness of third party flashing. Unfortunately in doing so, they made their routers horrible. There isn't enough memory to hold larger IP tables, so bittorrent traffic and the like bogs it down until it needs a restart. DDWRT helps a little, in that you can schedule restarts to go every hour or so, but the sporatic connection is le

Re:Buy another Linksys and link them.

[ydrol]

> lowered the internal memory to lessen the effectiveness of third party flashing

My understanding is the motivation was primarily cost. VxWorks runs on less hardware, and presumable the amount saved my reduced flash is greater than the per seat license cost for VxWorks?

>It's unfortunate that they felt like crippling a perfectly useful router just because free firmware made it competitive with their high end products.
Due to popular demand its back as the WRT54GL

Its called discipline

[javab0y]

Lay down the smack on the family...its the best traffic shaping you can do in the house. Who wears the pants? Not even ComCast can stop traffic like that!

QoS is definitely recommended

[Lilkat]

I have the same issue at home, except I'm the one who is running bittorrent. As of right now, it is not perfect, but it has greatly improved since I started doing tweaks. The first thing I did was install DD-WRT on the router. After that, I maxed the connection limit to 4096 and set the timeout to a low setting, like 5 minutes. From there, I did some modifications to the QoS settings. If a wired connection is used, set his connection to the lowest priority, and the rest to the top priority. This is no

Easiest way: Raise QoS of OTHER traffic.

[Zarhan]

Raise priority for

    - Web (Http and https, maybe also 8080)
    - DNS (UDP:53)
    - Mail (SMTP, IMAP, POP3 (including SSL versions))
    - IRC (if you use)
    - FTP
    - SSH, Telnet
    - All TCP acknowledgement packets.
    - Maybe some gaming protocols (Directplay, WoW, etc - these unfortunately require checking docs for each game)

that way, you have whitelisted most of the "interactive" protocols that suffer from loaded link. No need to keep chasing after the latest encrypted, onion routed P2P application that happens to be flavor of the month. The biggest problem is the online gaming stuff.

Re:

[Simulant]

MOD parent up. This is one of the easiest way to solve the problem. A better but more complex way is mucking around with the L7filter in dd-wrt which is tricky.

An easier way, if you've got the set up, is to do what I do; my vonage box gets the highest priority, my PC gets next highest and my home server, which does all the downloading as well as email is third along with everything else.

I can game, talk on the phone and download at 3-4mbps at the same time with no hiccups.

the human approach

[Peganthyrus]

Presumably saying "Hey, dude, can you throttle the hell out of your P2P? I'm getting no net whatsoever." is not an option.

If so, yeah, you could try looking into the alternate firmwares for the router; they let you throttle stuff based on ports. You'll have to look at the serial number to know for sure if you can stick that in, or spend like $80 or whatever for the WRTGL, which has enough firmware space to do fun things.

Is this a technical problem or a sociological one?

[AdamHaun]

What about talking to the housemate to get them to use a less aggressive client? Most P2P software that I know of has bandwidth cap options built in, which makes me think the poster is trying to do this under the table. How is the housemate going to react if/when they find out about it? Is this really a problem that's best addressed with technology?

Just speak to him!

[drspliff]

My housemate has a machine setup for bittorrent, when we first moved in together it was very annoying as he seemed oblivious that running it all the time meant that my connections were slow, dropping all the time & unusable.

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!

[Omnifarious]

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.

I use a DLink DLG-4300

[QX-Mat]

http://games.dlink.com/products/?pid=370 [dlink.com]

Works well, but is rather expensive. Has an oversized NAT table to help with UDP server pings, so this will remedy and torrent problems you might have with your current setup.

QoS system is fairly flexible with an intuitive GUI and many preconfigured service options.

Has an option to pack the output frames completely (harms XBox Live possibly) as well as delay non-prio packets in favour of VOIP/gaming/as you configure.

Matt

Re:I use a DLink DLG-4300

[chrysrobyn]

I've got to echo the DLink recommendation -- but I've had the 4100 for about a year. They call their QOS stuff "Game Fuel" (there were a few slashdot stories about it when they started hyping it up).

I've been very happy with mine, including being able to torrent like a freak and still use the Vonage box to make VOIP calls. I know the torrents are being throttled by my little box, but I can't see a big impact on transfer speeds. As a bonus, the DLink is much faster than the NAT firewall it replaced-- my maximum throughputs are higher.

Setup is as easy as configuring a normal NAT device. Of course, if you want to play with port forwarding, that's there too, and if you want your QOS to be a little more sophisticated than the default (which you should really try and see if you're happy with it), there are a plethora of configuration options.

OpenBSD Packet Filter

[Piranhaa]

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=pf.conf [openbsd.org] 'nuf said

DD-WRT

[Solandri]

You may be able to install DD-WRT [dd-wrt.com] on your router. It (along with other alternate firmwares) provides much better traffic shaping capabilities (called QoS for quality of service) than the default firmware. It lets you assign traffic to bulk (lowest), standard, express, premium, and exempt; based on port, MAC address, netmask (destination IP), or traffic type. Off the top of my head I believe the priorities refer to guaranteed 10%, 25%, 50%, 90%, and 100% of packets will get through.

First step would be to find out what type of P2P he's using and (if it's not recognized by DD-WRT) what ports. Drop those down to bulk priority. Raise special activities like https web browsing to express (on the assumption that connecting to an https server means you're doing something important like accessing your bank). Stuff that's time-critical like VoIP and gaming should get premium priority. This took care of 90% of the problems I had.

The remaining 10% proved extremely tricky. Newer bittorrent clients default to encryption on, and it was getting by the QoS. I tried tweaking all sorts of settings to mitigate this without success. What eventually worked was a setting anything on ports higher than 1024 to bulk priority, then specifying certain ports as having higher priority. This is the QoS equivalent of switching from allow all and blocking things you don't want, to deny all and allowing things you do want. That seems to have solved the bittorrent problem.

The only problems that remain have to do with http and ftp transfers of large files. If someone sticks a 40 MB file on a web site, the router can't tell it apart from regular http traffic, so you can't drop its priority without also affecting regular web browsing. In one case a user was running a program to download an entire web site - that was killing the network since to the router it looked just like a lot of web browsing. Same with ftp - if you drop ftp's priority so the 100 MB transfers are bulk, the small ftp files like certain software updates are also bulk.

Plenty

[NMerriam]

There are a bunch of options for open-source firmware that will do traffic-shaping on your router. I personally use Tomato [polarcloud.com] for the AJAXy goodness and overall usability.

You can do limits based on individual devices, which will keep any computer from ever saturating the network, or you can do time-based throttling, or whatever. I found the most useful setup was to make everything default to low priority and then raise the priority of HTTP, SSH, and other things I wanted to run interactively.

As long as nobody

There can be only ONE!!!

[rts008]

Nerf guns at 20 paces, last nerd standing wins!

tcpkill !

[alexandre]

dsniff's tcpkill does wonderful things... ;-)

outsource it

[nguy]

Just sign up with Comcast :-)

Traffic Shaping is a preferable solution

[Dan Farina]

I think a lot of the posts that suggest that the right solution is talking to the roommate and potentially some client settings are wrongheaded.

Most people don't care if their P2P download is slowed down a little from HTTP traffic (which is practically in the noise by comparison most of the time, really). In fact, some of those same people would prefer *their* web browsing sessions remain fast while torrenting. The only reason to go for client-side bandwidth throttling or scheduling is because the traffic s

Google for the acronym QOS

[pyite69]

aka traffic shaping

It's a good idea to work things out, but...

[Ethan Allison]

Even if you come to an agreement about putting in some speed caps, it'd probably be best to set up some sort of QoS. That way, your roommate's downloads are always using up 100% of whatever tube-space is left over after all the other stuff (including whatever he's doing). Maximize efficiency 'n stuff.

Netpriva perhaps.

[ozzee]

Netpriva [netpriva.com] has an application level shaping solution. They used to have a "free" trial product. The company was a MBO from a company called "foursticks". Give that a try.

DD-WRT vs X-Wrt

[bitsent]

There is some controversy surrounding DD-WRT [bitsum.com]; you must decide if you want to support them or not. I use OpenWrt with the X-Wrt extension [x-wrt.org], which also has powerful QoS functionality in a GUI.

pfsense ftw

[turing_m]

I've had good results with pfsense. Nice GUI, not too hard to set up, shapes traffic well enough that web browsing does not slow down appreciably. Games are tougher though, but I'm not in the same boat as you - if I want to game I just ensure that I'm not downloading anything at the time. I suspect I could have my cake and eat it too, but currently it's too much effort.

I tried smoothwall, m0n0wall, IPCop, and pfsense before settling on pfsense. YMMV.

From memory, I did a google search of slashdot and "traffi

Tomato

[TheTyrannyOfForcedRe]

Grab the Tomato firmware for your Linksys. Tomato's QoS features are much easier to configure than others like DDWRT. With Tomato, you don't need to be a Linux networking guru to do what you want. Tomato also handles P2P very well. You can pound a WRT54 running Tomato with heavy P2P traffic 24/7 for months with no perfmrance problems. No resets required. Grab it here http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato/ [polarcloud.com]

Linux, iptables and Traffic Control (tc)

[xororand]

As someone mentioned in a previous post, it's much easier to just whitelist priorized services such as ssh, telnet or gaming protocols than wasting too much CPU cycles on detecting obscure P2P protocols with layer 7 filters.

Personally, I use iptables & tc to setup a simple HTB (Hierarchical Token Bucket filter) system with 3 priority levels:

- Interactive: SSH (with Minimize-Delay TOS-Flag), Telnet, Jabber, ...
- Medium: HTTP, IMAP, SMTP, POP3, ...
- Low: All the rest

Shaping the upload speed is my only concern. All 3 classes may use the complete upload bandwidth. The interactive HTB class gets a guaranteed 90% of the bandwidth and a high burst value. The lowest HTB class has a burst of 0 and about 5% guaranteed upload speed.

While this is only primitive setup, it allows lag-free ssh with an unlimited upload in the background.

An in-depth how-to about the Linux Traffic Control system: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Traffic-Control-HOWTO/index.html [tldp.org]

A short pragmatic example using HTB & SFQ can be found here: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Packet_Shaping [gentoo-wiki.com]

Get Your Own Connection

[rueger]

Instead of cheaping out spend $30 a month for your own cable or DSL connection. Or, as many have suggested, just talk to the guy.

Barring that just connect the 220v dryer line to the wall socket in his room and hope that he got his power bar for $5.99 at WalMart.

Or even better please all of your room-mates and just move.

Do this....

[thetoadwarrior]

Tell him if he doesn't stop using P2P while everyone else is awake and using the net then you're going to cave his skull in with his monitor.

You'll either make him stop or make him press charges. Either way it probably won't be an issue for you anymore.

Avoid DD-WRT

[Dwedit]

Stay away from the third party "DD-WRT" firmware if you use any form of P2P. Due to some unresolved bugs in the firmware, any form of BitTorrent makes the router completely unresponsive, not even responding to the router's web interface.

Am I the only one here who uses stock firmware?

[77Punker]

I've a WRT54G with stock firmware in it. It has QoS in it from the factory. What's the problem here? What's with all this DD-WRT stuff? My default firmware is easy to use and works every time.

Known problem with Linksys

[aussiedood]

From the uTorrent FAQ [utorrent.com]: "The default firmware for Linksys (and all replacement firmwares except for the latest DD-WRT and HyperWRT Thibor) have a severe problem where they track old connections for FIVE days, which causes the router to hang when using P2P apps, or any software that generates a lot of connections. DHT only aggravates the situation because of the number of connections it generates."

Does NOT apply to WRT54G/GS v5 and up.
HTH

Get him to switch to Azureus (a.k.a. Vuze?)

[ivi]

If he's not got a P2P client that lets him reduce its bandwidth use, get him to use one that does.

Alternatively, insert a cheap PC with 2 LAN interfaces (NICs), running SmoothWall (firewall) between your ADSL modem & your switch.

Among other things, SmoothWall can regulate bandwidth to guarantee each of you fair amounts.

Actually, there OUGHT TO BE a ONE MORE FEATURE - yet to be developed? - in any such device:

When one isn't using their portion of the bandwidth (& -certainly- when not connected to the

More of a house rules issue than a technical one

[kungfoolery]

If you can't have a frank conversation about communal resource usage with your own roommate than your have much bigger problems than mere router configuration will ever solve.

I'm sure you guys have laid down basic guidelines governing how you'll split up paying for and using shared stuff. Like, "Hey dude, if you insist on running that 20 node Beowulf cluster in your room to crunch SETI work units all day, you should pay more for electricity." Or if nothing that specific, at least rules along the lines of "neither of us should monopolize the common area on a consistent basis preventing the other from ever having guests over."

I don't think shared Internet usage should be any different. If you're the administrator of the network at home, it seems that what you're suggesting would be tantamount to setting up bear traps in the common area to discourage over foraging by your inconsiderate roommate. Of course, if he/she is that much of a boor, maybe you have no choice.

Bottom line though: it would probably be better to talk it over with your roommate rather than putting the smack down with filters and such... in the end, there'll be a lot less resentment from both ends.

Don't use software to solve social problems...

[rit]

The best piece of professional advice I ever received was this:

"Don't use software to solve social problems"

This seems pretty apt here - instead of spending money and time trying to do this the hard way....

Just fucking smack him, and tell him to behave responsibly or lose his internet privileges.

Don't Answer Him... It's a TRAP

[Ralph Spoilsport]

He's from the RIAA, and he's part of a research to find ways to fix the problem at the root.

Re:DDWRT gives you a GUI then you can....

[schnikies79]

Yea, I finally gave up on DD-WRT. It was unstable and a resource hog. Tomato is a MUCH better option if you want a web gui.

My pings dropped 10ms and the QOS actually works.

Re:

[garbletext]

+1, absolutely true. Tomato is awesome.

Re:

[SanityInAnarchy]

He's not an ISP, so the same rules don't apply.

Also, chances are, QoSing BitTorrent down in that house will probably still let it run close to full speed, as there probably aren't another few hundred people trying to look at YouTube at the same time. Web browsing really dosen't take that much bandwidth.

Re:

[Awptimus Prime]

Or save the ten bucks a month in electricity and show him how to set his bandwidth limits in his client.

The lengths people will go to avoid social interaction these days.