Hi all,

A bit of background: originally, I had a network running with a server connected to 1mbps cable broadband (running win XP) setup simply using the XP internet connection sharing (ICS) utility to share the connection between me (an XP and suse 8.2 user) and two other housemates (exclusive windows users). This worked fine till the server died a death in November.

Since then, another housemate has been active as ICS server. Fine. Except that he is obsessed with P2P file sharing and the result is that both me and my other housemate have connections worse than dial-ups.

So I have brought the server back to life, and am going to set it up exclusively with SuSE 8.2 (this is the only distro I have found to be readily compatible with the wireless network cards we use).

Now what I want to do is set up some sort of proxy server that can restrict the bandwidth of its clients ***by their MAC address***. OK, so I know there are ways of doing this, but I want more than that. I would like the proxy to be "transparent" as Windows ICS is - i.e. you don't have to set up any proxy settings in any program to use the internet, it just works.

Any suggestions what software I need to do this (will squid do the job?) and any particular configuration needed for the MAC bandwidth restriction and the "transparent" ability?

All help *very* greatfully received!!

Mark.