Traffic Shaping on my LAN

[lida]

What is the best method of shaping traffic on my LAN?
the problem arises because if someone is viewing a BBC video or listening to the radio on their computer or using the BBC playback service suddenly that consumes about 8mb of my 10mb connection and i cant play games as it gets very laggy

I had in mind perhaps some kind of router software or something in windows 7 that would allow me to specify that certain sites or types of media can only consume x amount of bandwidth

[grim reaper]

some routers have a bandwidth limiting function built in ... my old linksys wrt54g had such a function and i would guess that other linksys routers would have it but you would have to check the specs before buying

[craigj2k12]

you could set up a proxy server on a desktop PC, I cant remember the name of one that I used a while back, but it was open source, and had a bandwidth limiting option on it

[Jayrull I]

I used to use Net Limiter (http://www.netlimiter.com/)to limit how much bandwidth each process could use.

I set it up during when Virgin Media STM was enforced (10AM-3PM & 4PM-9PM) so that the limits wouldn't be triggered.

Net Limiter also has an option to remotely view settings on other computers in the LAN which I think let's you change the limits etc.

In my opinion it's a very good piece of software however it is paid for software however you can grab the trial copy to test it out here: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/N...tLimiter.shtml

Here are some alternatives: http://alternativeto.net/software/netlimiter/

Yay my first post

[haydnwalker]

10mb isn't the best package for streaming AND gaming at the same time, as the streaming alone can kick in the VM traffic shaping quite quickly (which will then impact your gaming).

If you can't upgrade your package then I suggest proxying content within your LAN (an old desktop PC running linux & squid proxy server should be fine) - though you need to be fairly au fait with linux to configure this.

---------- Post added at 09:07 ---------- Previous post was at 09:06 ----------

Apart from WinProxy (which is a paid for app) and MS ISA Server (which is paid for and expensive), I don't know of any freee proxy servers for windows.

[Uncle Peter]

You can run Squid under windows (which is open source code and free) but it's not really the ideal solution because it's a lot of faffing about, in fact the proxy server route can potentially be more of a hindrance than a help ie: if you start breaking things like vpn, authentication and p2p applications.

On many home routers you will be able to setup a QoS rule -say, for streaming media and apply an upstream or downstream bandwidth ceiling by MAC address. iirc you can certainly do this on the Cisco/Linksys E series routers.

[Jayrull I]

Originally Posted by haydnwalker

10mb isn't the best package for streaming AND gaming at the same time

Would 20mb be ok for the OP? That is if VM still offer 20mb or are all the users on 30mb?

I'm not with VM anymore so have lost track of all the changes which have happened recently eg: broadband upgrades, introduction of superhub etc.

[haydnwalker]

I would have thought 20/30mb would be ok as the stm limits are higher than 10mb