Bandwith control with a home wireless network. How?

Hi

Long story I know but please read -
After building and installing two computers for a friend, I installed a
wireless network (about 8 months ago) with a Linksys WAG54G DSL router and
Gigabyte 802.11g compatible wireless adapter (it came with the M/B).
After trolling the internet and newsgroups for hours on end, I still don't
have an answer.
The network works great except for one big problem, bandwidth. The way the
network is being used causes problems with bandwidth management (I think
that's the way you would put it, stay with me on this. lol) One computer is
mainly being used for file downloads and general heavy bandwidth
requirements, the other is for internet gaming. When one comp is downloading
and the other is being used for gaming the latency and data retrieval for
internet gaming is terrible (as you can imagine). And now I have been asked
to fix this problem.

I have already tried some software solutions like netlimiter, but the
software that I have tried doesn't seem very stable and at best alleviates
the problem to a minimum.

Is there any way to control the bandwidth to each computer? E.g. 20% to one
and 80% to the other? (Both upload and download) It doesn't have to support
ports or per application, just general bandwidth.

Am I missing the point entirely?

Or is there a hardware solution to this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks

On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:12:43 GMT, "CorSec" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Is there any way to control the bandwidth to each computer? E.g. 20% to one
>and 80% to the other? (Both upload and download) It doesn't have to support
>ports or per application, just general bandwidth.
>
>Am I missing the point entirely?
>
>Or is there a hardware solution to this?

there are some routers that include bandwidth limits to certain wired
ports, haven't seen one that does it per wireless client though.

Phil
--

Usenet spam eaten by a Hamster http://www.tglsoft.de/
No more cable clowns :-))
Please do not feed or re-quote the trolls.

"CorSec" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%3Uif.9047$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi
>
> Long story I know but please read -
> After building and installing two computers for a friend, I installed a
> wireless network (about 8 months ago) with a Linksys WAG54G DSL router and
> Gigabyte 802.11g compatible wireless adapter (it came with the M/B).
> After trolling the internet and newsgroups for hours on end, I still don't
> have an answer.
> The network works great except for one big problem, bandwidth. The way the
> network is being used causes problems with bandwidth management (I think
> that's the way you would put it, stay with me on this. lol) One computer
is
> mainly being used for file downloads and general heavy bandwidth
> requirements, the other is for internet gaming. When one comp is
downloading
> and the other is being used for gaming the latency and data retrieval for
> internet gaming is terrible (as you can imagine). And now I have been
asked
> to fix this problem.
>
> I have already tried some software solutions like netlimiter, but the
> software that I have tried doesn't seem very stable and at best alleviates
> the problem to a minimum.
>
> Is there any way to control the bandwidth to each computer? E.g. 20% to
one
> and 80% to the other? (Both upload and download) It doesn't have to
support
> ports or per application, just general bandwidth.
>
> Am I missing the point entirely?
>
> Or is there a hardware solution to this?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated
> Thanks

I have successfully got around this problem by installing a computer that
stays switched on 24/7. I use it as a webserver / file server and webcam
server, so it has other uses other than bandwidth control but this is how I
have done it. I've set up a proxy server to allow internet access via the
server 'only' (there are no back door ways of getting onto the net other
than through the proxy), and I use software traffic shaping (on the server)
to control the bandwidth to all computers connected to it. The result is a
network that allows heavy uploads/downloads + VOIP and shared access without
any noticeable bandwidth issues. To further improve things, certain
applications have priority over others, for example, if I receive a call via
Vo-IP, this take priority to ensure that the call is not broken up due to
bandwidth issues. File sharing has low priority and my webserver and file
server / webcam have higher priority to ensure that anyone accessing a
website held on my server, can do so without any problems. I am very pleased
with the results, but you have to remember that a computer is required to
stay switched on to manage the bandwidth, but my computer was already
running 24/7 before I decided to add proxy access and traffic shaping to the
network.

Regards

"CorSec" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%3Uif.9047$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi
>
> Long story I know but please read -
> After building and installing two computers for a friend, I installed a
> wireless network (about 8 months ago) with a Linksys WAG54G DSL router and
> Gigabyte 802.11g compatible wireless adapter (it came with the M/B).
> After trolling the internet and newsgroups for hours on end, I still don't
> have an answer.
> The network works great except for one big problem, bandwidth. The way the
> network is being used causes problems with bandwidth management (I think
> that's the way you would put it, stay with me on this. lol) One computer
> is
> mainly being used for file downloads and general heavy bandwidth
> requirements, the other is for internet gaming. When one comp is
> downloading
> and the other is being used for gaming the latency and data retrieval for
> internet gaming is terrible (as you can imagine). And now I have been
> asked
> to fix this problem.
>
> I have already tried some software solutions like netlimiter, but the
> software that I have tried doesn't seem very stable and at best alleviates
> the problem to a minimum.
>
> Is there any way to control the bandwidth to each computer? E.g. 20% to
> one
> and 80% to the other? (Both upload and download) It doesn't have to
> support
> ports or per application, just general bandwidth.
>
> Am I missing the point entirely?
>
> Or is there a hardware solution to this?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated
> Thanks
>
Not aware of anyhting like that for Wireless.
My experience (being a keen online gamer, CS/BF2 etc.) is not to d/l
anything else on DSL/Cable whilst gaming unless you have 4Mb plus.

"CorSec" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:%3Uif.9047$(E-Mail Removed)...
[snip]
> One computer is mainly being used for file downloads and general heavy
> bandwidth requirements, the other is for internet gaming. When one comp
> is downloading and the other is being used for gaming the latency and
> data retrieval for internet gaming is terrible (as you can imagine). And
> now I have been asked to fix this problem.

There are fundamental limits to what you can achieve. The greater the
connection speed the better, but unless it is infinite, downloading *will*
affect latency in games, by delaying packets - it's just a question of how
much (which depends on the connection speed) and how frequently (which
depends on the download speed). Uploading is usually even worse, because the
bandwidth is typically less.

To get the best results possible, you need a router that can both prioritise
packets and control bandwidth allocation. Some domestic routers offer this,
but from on the routers I've seen the control you have is far from ideal -
to the point of being almost useless in some cases.

Alex

Alex Fraser <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> "CorSec" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:%3Uif.9047$(E-Mail Removed)...
> [snip]
> > One computer is mainly being used for file downloads and general heavy
> > bandwidth requirements, the other is for internet gaming. When one comp
> > is downloading and the other is being used for gaming the latency and
> > data retrieval for internet gaming is terrible (as you can imagine). And
> > now I have been asked to fix this problem.
>
> There are fundamental limits to what you can achieve. The greater the
> connection speed the better, but unless it is infinite, downloading *will*
> affect latency in games, by delaying packets - it's just a question of how
> much (which depends on the connection speed) and how frequently (which
> depends on the download speed). Uploading is usually even worse, because the
> bandwidth is typically less.
>
> To get the best results possible, you need a router that can both prioritise
> packets and control bandwidth allocation. Some domestic routers offer this,
> but from on the routers I've seen the control you have is far from ideal -
> to the point of being almost useless in some cases.
>
I have a non-wireless Zyxel router (650H, I think) which does
bandwidth control. As Alex Fraser says above it isn't perfect but it
does help. I use it to limit the amount of bandwidth that BitTorrent
can have. Until I set up the bandwidth control BitTorrent would make
other services (especially interactive ones like using an ssh
connection) almost unusable. Other services are now quite usable when
BitTorrent is running but they are still noticeably slower even though
BotTorrent is only allowed to use half the available bandwidth.

--
Chris Green

Hi

Thank you all for your help
The Zyxel 650H looks good, but there is another one with wireless as well,
the 662HW and probably a lot more expensive.
However I have just checked the netlimiter page and noticed that there is
netlimiter v2 beta 5 available, I haven`t checked the page for months, so I
will give that a go and see how it runs first.

Thank you again for all your help.
Cheers

On Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:12:43 GMT, "CorSec" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Long story I know but please read -

You can do bandwidth throttling under Linux using "TC". Either place a
Linux box between the AP and your ASDL router, or implement TC under a
3rd-party firmware for a suitable AP (eg. Linksys WRT54G).

http://www.batbox.org/wrt54g-linux.html
http://www.rns-nis.co.yu/~mps/linux-tc.html

TC requires an iptables firewall under Linux.

I use TC to throttle bandwidth on the public hotspot which I run at
home. I can then VPN through to get unthrottled access for myself
only. I wrote a HOWTO here:

http://www.nam-vets.org/frampton/hotspot-howto.php#tc

--
Andrew Oakley andrew/atsymbol/aoakley/stop/com
Gloucestershire, UK