I’m looking at my budget and I can finally afford ADSL ($95Au unlimited - 512/128)
I have 2 computers I have connected at the moment with my dial up.
That’s all good, but when I get my ADSL I’ll have both computers conencted into a server which will be connected to the net and act as a firwall (so I can reboot my comp and my GFs comp won’t go offline).
Now my problem. All my girlfriend does with her share of the net is look at shit and play scrabble. Thats ok for me as I’ll be playing DoD and whooping butt in NS and she won’t be taking away too much bandwidth. However, she does do the odd download, and I have heard that her downlaoding will take away my bandwith, thus giving me a shit ping and making my well spent cash no longer well spent.
Is there some way on gods green earth that I can “shape” her net to give her less bandwith. (oh , how selfish does that sound… :twisted: )
I still want her to get a desent spead, but not enough that I may as well be on a 56 modem. I’m aming for a ping of 100-120 in Half life games…)
Damn. 512/128 isn’t anything to call home about, but there are some measures you can take.
Most file-sharing software programs have the ability to cap upload and download speeds, WinMX and KLite are both really full-featured in this respect.
Also, you can modify the registry to limit the number of IE download windows allowed to be open. Google for “Windows XP registry IE downloads tweak” and you should find some info on how to do that. You may only want to limit her to 1 or 2 windows, instead of the default 3.
Internet sharing software should allow you to limit her bandwidth usage, but keep in mind, you only have 512/128. Upload on 56K is 33.6 upstream, so while it may be sort of viscious to cap her at something like 64/32, even if you do that, you’ll only have 448/96 left for yourself when she’s using it.
How much extra is it for double the upstream? I see that as your biggest obstacle for proper online gaming nirvana.
The top ADSL connection here in aus is 1500/256 at the place I’m planning I’m going through that’s $200Au per month (the cheapest I have heard of is $119 but thats “shaped” so it’s not truely unlim… and I think it might be a bit dodgy)… the fastest net I can think of getting in Australia is Cable via Optus, but as I’m in Tas we can’t get that… and there are no plans for them to release it here (fuckers). Thats why I’m going for the 512/128… it’ll do for games… at the moment my pings are pretty bad (200+ on a good day) so a ping of 100 would be sweet… plus it’s not like my GF downloads all the time. A mate of mine has a similar setup, 512/128 and he shares with his old man… all his dad does it what my GF does… except he doesn’t download…
So you’re saying I can “shape” her net from the server… that would be the best way… her computer is ‘her computer’ and I don’t want to fuck around with it just to get a better ping… what would you recommend as softeware for my server that would do that.
It sounds like you want a traffic shaping (manage prioritization of bandwidth) solution. I know XP has some features for that built in, but I think it works in conjunction with higher end switches and traffic shaping hardware. A quick googling did find this.
I have no experience with that software or traffic shaping in general so good luck.
How often does she download something, though? Are we talking about a file or two a day? If so, better to just say “hey, can you wait till I’m done with this Counterstrike game” than to have to deal with putting bandwidth allocation software on your rig, which is just going to steal CPU cycles…
I do that now, but the girl… .she pouts… :-P … jsut joknig… yeh I could do that… but her family ask her for stuff to look up and get for them… eggh… and she usually wants it “right away” … any way… not to worry… I think I found what I want
I use it on my server to divvie up bandwidth between concurrently running programs. It helps prevent saturating my bandwidth. Every download requires some upload (and viceversa), and I have a 40KB/sec upload and a 200KB/sec download cap.
Using netlimiter, I ensure that the combined processes never use more than 85% of max.
Everything that you want to do with a dedicated router can be done with a Linux box. Actually you can do more. This message is being posted through my work firewall, which uses Linux. The server also handles incoming PPTP. That way, I can do VPN stuff without having to put a Microsoft box on the internet, because I’ve got better things to do than run Windows Update everyday.
As far as I know clark connect is a linux distro (I don’t know much about linux, but… oh well)
I’m going to have it like this
My computer and my girlfriends computer will connect to my 8 port switch which in turn connects to the server box which is connected to the ADSL modem which shall deliver me my “pr0n” and “newbs to h4x0r in DoD” . The server box will be running Clark connect to handle all firewall/shaping etc… I’ll use “putty” to connect to the server box to make any changes so I can just have the box under my desk, out of the way. I chose to have a switch due to a mate coming up every now and then for LANs and he just plugs straight in and he’s online. (he runs a similar setup at home… I jsut wanted teh shaping stuff)
with the cost of things here I don’t think I’ll worry about a router just yet :-) … going to have a hard enough time finding a reliable yet inexpensive ADSL modem.
Pfft. ;-) Over. Kill. (plus it still doesn’t do wireless)
A dedicated router is cheaper ($60), cooler, quieter, and more energy efficient. For something that’s going to always be on, a router can help you save on your electricity bills.
I think dedicating a whole PC to network routing is wasting resources. If you run you own mailing lists and http and ftp servers, then sure, it makes sense to have the same PC pull extra duty as a gateway/router since it’s going to be on 24/7 anyway.
At home, I use the Linksys etherfast wireless-b access point cable/dsl router with 4 port 10/100 switch. It’s a hassle-free, plug and play bit of kit. Amazon.com sells them for $70 ($60, after mail-in rebate) with no sales tax and free shipping.
But that linux machine also is the home for my tape backup drive now. As mentioned earlier, it also does PPTP VPN stuff, which is something you don’t find on low-end $70 routers.
I even had the machine already, I just installed it, and set it up. It wasn’t that hard for me. Then again, I have a CS degree and am used to this stuff.
At home I have an el-cheapo router, but at work, things are different.
I would imagine most of the consumer-grade routers sold use a stripped down form of Linux with a graphical frontend.
Also, setting up a Linux system as a router, such as Coyote isn’t that hard. I’ve helped a couple of friends who had an old extra system laying around set up stuff like this. Almost all of the stuff is documented well, and if you have an extra box sitting there, its free (except for the time to set it up). In my case, I didn’t have enough parts laying around to build a system, so buying a router made more sense to me.
I have a BBA in MIS, so I’m no all knowing CS grad. ;)
I don’t think so. I do embedded Linux stuff, and if you strip Linux down to a networking stack, there’s really not that much code there needed for consumer level routing. Companies like Netgear and Linksys will happily hire a team of 50 programmers to create custom firmware if it means they can save $10 on the cost of goods.
Also, setting up a Linux system as a router, such as Coyote isn’t that hard. I’ve helped a couple of friends who had an old extra system laying around set up stuff like this. Almost all of the stuff is documented well, and if you have an extra box sitting there, its free (except for the time to set it up). In my case, I didn’t have enough parts laying around to build a system, so buying a router made more sense to me.
Putting together a Linux router is also fun to do, because you can learn on it.
I have a BBA in MIS, so I’m no all knowing CS grad. ;)
I’ve known CS people that couldn’t figure out how to copy files. I dose my hoity-toity CS degree with a large amount of hands-on work. You see, in my small company of 7 people, guess who also does the IT. :lol:
Well, if you’re going to run Linux, there are lots and lots of router projects designed to let you run your machine on the cheapest hardware you can find (there’s one that used to float around that’s floppy based – ie. no HD necessary – and runs fine on a 286).
I have both a router and a linux box – the latter sits on a separate IP address from the router and is also used as a router for my neighbors who connect via wireless. There are a number of Linux distros designed for those of us who are freaking unix morons and can’t figure out the (incredibly poorly written) man pages. I recommend checking out smeserver.org or clarkconnect (which nutsak already flagged, I think), both of which do essentially the same thing, and are relatively idiot proof.
Or, if you’re dying for it, I’ll sell you my old Cobalt Qube 2 which is sitting in a corner around here somewhere…
Aleck
PS. I should mention that I have a BA in Politics (which they call Politics at my alma mater, rather than Political Science, since they recognize that there ain’t no science in politics). So if I can do it, you can too!
We should get together sometime and make fun of hardware vendors.
Coincidentally, one of my current documentation projects is an embedded Linux gateway/bridge/router/VPN (l2tp,pptp,ipsec)/802.11b/voice-over-IP/thingee based on a PowerPC chip.
The main hurdle now is speeding things up. It takes about 3 minutes to boot completely, and 3-4 seconds to serve the HTML configuration pages.
