Internet Hogging, Help!

vforvindieselvforvindiesel
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
So I currently live with 4 other people and recently, one of them has been downloading/uploading files to an exclusive site similar to utorrent. The more he uploads, the higher his rank is or something and he gains access to more features and files. This being the case, our internet is constantly bogged down and moving ridiculously slow. We've told him to stop, in which case he does for about a half hour but in no time, hes back at it again. Is there a way we can get around this or any ideas/solutions? He pays his share per month so we can't just change the router password.



Thanks in advance!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    twrexxtwrexx Posts: 2member
    too easy. Upgrade your bandwidth allowance, it will cost more, but he can pay the difference since he is using the majority of it. Possible drawback would be he gobbles up all that space too.



    In that case, you tell him to get his own internet set up, and the rest of you guys use the one you currently have.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,449moderator
    This is something that irritates me about standard routers. This level of control is absolutely necessary and yet hardly any offer it. The 802.11n standard is supposed to support QoS (Quality of Service) controls but I haven't seen many routers advertising the capability.



    There are routers from Linksys - the WRT54G models - that support modifying the firmware. There are custom firmwares out there that have QoS features like Tomato and DD-WRT.



    If you get a router like that, upload Tomato firmware onto it and follow this guide:



    http://www.decimation.com/markw/2007...ato-qos-setup/



    you should be able to limit the bandwidth he gets.



    It's pretty selfish of him to use the bandwidth as the upload and download speeds can be limited to whatever he wants. He should at most use 50%.



    Another thing to bear in mind is that some ISPs have started throttling bandwidth at peak times when it detects P2P traffic so it doesn't matter what he limits his bandwidth to, the ISP will drop you down to a low speed until all P2P traffic is stopped.



    The ideal solution is that he does not run P2P software at all when people need to use the internet. Running at full speed from say 1am to 8am should be ok. This should be scriptable.



    It's not unreasonable to block him from using your service if he is using it selfishly.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    vforvindieselvforvindiesel Posts: 2member
    Thanks for your input guys, just to add a bit more. I did speed tests earlier when he was on, then changed the wireless network name so that he had to reconnect.



    Here are the test results (5 mins apart):

    Without him on





    With him on





    As you can see, it's extremely noticable.



    Currently, I'm using a Linksys WRT54G v2.2. It lets me put in a date and time block but as far as I know I can't find a feature to limit his speeds or anything like that :/
  • Reply 4 of 5
    akanbeakanbe Posts: 15member
    If he's using more and it's effecting the other users, make him pay for more share of the internet.



    or like someone else said, upgrade and make him pay for the upgrade.



    imo, charging more money is probably the only thing that would make him consider changing his ways.



    edit: i really like Marvin's bottom idea. Ask him to run his torrent program after everyone goes to sleep till like afternoon when people get home. That's pretty reasonable i think.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,449moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by VforVinDiesel View Post


    Currently, I'm using a Linksys WRT54G v2.2. It lets me put in a date and time block but as far as I know I can't find a feature to limit his speeds or anything like that :/



    You need to modify the firmware of your router. This can damage the router if you do it wrong or if it loses power during the process but the same could happen using an official Linksys firmware upgrade. The instructions for uploading the firmware are here:



    http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Tomato_...4GL_or_WRT54GS



    The actual firmware is here:



    http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato



    These are compressed with 7zip, the extractor is here:



    http://www.7-zip.org/
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