I live in an apartment with 3 other roommates, and we share the internet connection though a wireless router (Level One WBR-3406TX). One of the roommates is always running utorrent, and it is slowing down everybody's connection way too much. Unfortunately, he feels like he shouldn't have to give up on downloading stuff, and is refusing to stop hogging the bandwidth. I was wondering if there's something I can do to the router configuration that would disrupt his use of utorrent just enough to to make the internet usable for the rest of us, and still have it work well enough for him so that he doesn't start poking around looking for answers.
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You're looking for QoS or Quality of Service controls. These allow you to regulate the priority based on IP/port or type of traffic (HTTP, bittorrent, ssh, VoIP, etc.) I don't know if that router supports it, but if you have a spare computer lying around, or if you pick up a Linksys WRT54GL ($70), you can install an alternate firmware such as Tomato or DD-WRT which will allow you to set bittorrent traffic, or all traffic coming from his computer to low priority. This will allow him to use full bandwidth if it's available, but if someone else starts to use the web or watch a youtube video, the router will automatically throttle/limit the bittorrent to make bandwidth available for other things. This would only be a last resort - See if he'll settle for setting uTorrent to cap at half or 3/4ths of your available bandwidth, as this allows him to continue downloading without 'hogging' all the available bandwidth. Ultimately it's up to whoever is paying for the connection. | |||
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Looking at the spec sheet for that router, it supports QoS (Quality of Service) for traffic to either a specific port or IP. You can set his traffic to the lowest priority, which wouldn't effect him while you are idle, but would throttle his traffic if there is contention. | |||||||||
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