I have a Linux computer acting as gateway on our private subnet (static masquerade). It works great, but I have a concern...

We get Internet access through a DSL connection. This connection allows the office employees access the Internet, but also lets web viewers get to our website(s), located on a server on the same public subnet that this gateway PC is on.

My concern is that there is occasionally a tug-o-war between the gateway and server (both Linux). Both are vying for the available traffic.

So, I would like to throttle (as much as possible anyway) bandwidth on the gateway box and am not sure how to go about it.

I have iptables performing the masquerade on this gateway box. I have read about the 'tc' command, but I am having a hard time understanding how it works.

Is there an easy way to do this? If so, can you point me in the right direction? Most of the primers I have found deal with other situations or are overly complicated.

Traffic shaping is what you're looking for:

http://lartc.org/

It does take a bit of work to get going.

Here's another link for more info, using a different approach:

http://blog.kovyrin.net/2006/04/06/5...x-shaping-htb/

I have already read most of the materials on this site and it is a bit over the top. I'm not a networking novice, but I think the documentation provided by the link above assumes you are a hard core Linux guru with many years of Linux experience.

IMHO, it does a poor job of explaining anything in layman terms.

That's why I was hoping there was (1) another alternative to the tc approach all together, or (2) another tutorial which could explain the whole thing in more verbose terms.

One of the most inherent problems with virtually IT documentation is that the authors only know how to explain things in tech lingo and often can't say anything in layman terms.

For the most part, I understand the IT documentation I read, as I have been involved in IT for some time. But those learning IT concepts could be made so much easier if authors learned how to better communicate with others. This complicates the already steep Linux learning curve.

With that said, is there another source you recommend which could be used in hand with the ones above? I get the general gist of what the author is saying (I understand TCP/IP), but when he starts throwing out commands and how traffic control is handled on Linux he assumes the reader knows more than they typically does and that's where I get lost.