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Long shot maybe.. I spent a while looking round google and some stores to see if anyone could sell me an ethernet bandwidth limiter.
It looks like I need a switch or router with QoS or something..? I don't really want to buy an adsl router, I don't have adsl. besides, my lan works OK as it is and I don't want to mess with it. I want a switch or router I can put in between my main router and one particular PC and I don't want to do it in software.
any ideas ? :confused:
I've used a cisco switch that does this, but they aren't cheap.
Most home network devices don't provide that sort of functionality.
I've just bought a Belkin N1 Vision, which has QOS, but its not configurable, it just automatically give several protocols priority (VOIP etc).
It does have a nifty display, so you can see how much bandwidth different devices are using, which is handy.
It's pretty easy if you just want to limit it to one of the 'standard' ethernet interface bandwidths - eg 2MB, 10MB, 100MB, 1000MB etc, as you just set the card to only work at that speed. But anything else is a little more tricky.
One way to do it would be to use an old PC or laptop as a router/firewall, running something like a Linux based firewall - that'll give you the control you want, but it's probably a bit of a sledgehammer way of doing it.
QoS only determines packet priority, not allowable bandwidth, so that won't help unfortunately.
Those are your only options bud without paying an extortionate amount on a nice managed Cisco switch. QoS controls priority as mentioned already but it doesn't actually limit the bandwidth going through a switch, the cheapest option would be to limit the PC's network card or install some kind of software on a machine to limit what is passed through it.
thanks guys, thats pretty much what I figured I'd need to do, I just had a little hope that some manufaturer or other might have had the notion to manufacture a simple limiting device or atleast add the facility to a router.
I already run a linux box, have done for a decade since I installed my (then very expensive :D ) broadband connection. it only has one nic though, I think I decided I'd need a pair of nic's for it to work. perhaps not, I might be able to route it in and out of a single card ? i'm into playing with iptables then, and setting up dhcp on the linux box which is something I havn't done for a long time. I wouldn't have a clue these days :) I'll do some reading on it and see how complicated it looks :D
incase anyone cares, I found a handy script called cbq.init that takes care of all the complicated stuff, it seems to work OK on the linux box, I just need to install another network card it seems!