Hi LinuxQuestions.org,

I'm a new linux user (ubuntu on my main machine) and I have a linux question I hope you can answer.

(long story, skip to TL;DR if not interested)

In my household a number of people use the internet. Up to a maximum of 3 wired connections and 2 wireless connections at its peak, all connection through my D-LINK G604T router. The problem is, when one person is downloading or watching youtube or whatever, the others using the internet suffer. I've spent hours configuring QoS on my router, and long story short, no matter how I configure it, it just simply does not work. QoS in no way shape or form limits connection speed (which it says it should). Anyway.

I have a spare computer under my desk, and I'd like to know if i could set this up with a (free) linux distro that limits bandwidth speed per connection. For example, of the 1500 kb/ps (about) my modem pulls, is there a way to limit that to 768 or 512 per connection? so person A can still download, person B can still watch youtube, and person C can still play counterstrike with a latency under 100. This would solve many, many arguments in my house I am *fairly* good with computers, but if the distro came with documentation and a GUI that would be awesome.


*** TL;DR: ***

Is there a linux distro I can load on a spare computer that limits bandwitch per connection, wireless or otherwise, with good documentation?

failing that is there firmware i can use for my modem (dlink g604t) that would do the same?

failing that do you know of any good hitmen that would solve my family arguments, ahem, permanently?

Many thanks in advance. Tips and advice appreciated.

pHreak

What about squid?

its great fried with a little marinara!

Permanently? well it solves this problem permanently, but may well create a more serious one permanently. Anyway, you may be able to get a discount if you want several solutions at the same time...

Well, whatever you do with QoS (or whatever), you aren't going to get more bits per second through your modem than it will give. You may be able to share it out differently, but that may just mean annoying different people by different amounts.

So, if you only have one person using the system, you want them to have less bandwidth than the system can give. OK, if that's what you want...


Don't know of a specialist distribution for that, but you could probably get, eg, smoothwall to do it without too much hassle if you want to. But, essentially, I think you'll end up using squid's delay pools as suggested earlier and you can install squid on more-or-less any distro.

Thanks for the replies, I'll try out squid.

cheers

I have read all information about this topic.You have done very best job.I'm pretty sure most retail home routers offer some sort of QoS configurations, not sure if that's going to do what you want... but I think it would be the closest thing.

I'm not sure of the QoS capbilities of squid, I thought it was more of a proxy application. I use an open source app called mrtg that will tell you which user is the bandwidth hog, it even makes pretty charts to you can show them to the user