Is there a way to limit the bandwidth a computer can use in order to leave some for others?

Question

I have Verizon Fios. One of my housemates plays LotR online and probably downloads mass amounts of media files at the same time, because when I check the Verizon Router Page on our network, the bandwidth goes crazy high whenever he's on, disenabling me to use the internet or play my own games.

Is there some type of way I can limit the amount of...speed he can use?

Answer 1

What your asking for is Quality of Service.

You would limit this thru the router itself.

If you can access the router, log on and go to advance.  Click Quality of Service.  You are going to have to manipulate the settings so that he cannot use ALL of the bandwidth.  I am not exactly sure how to do this on a Verizon Router... It might require a call to the Verizon Tech Support for help.  

Download Speed depends on SOOO many things.

1)  The speed of your connection to the Internet is one of the main factors.  The faster you are, the better your chances of getting the "speed" your desiring.

2)  The distance between you and the distant end your surfing.  THe longer the distances, the bigger the chance that you will hit congestion.  If any router between you and the server your making request from is busy, your speed halts BIG TIME!  Also, what time of day is it?  Early in the morning on the east coast will usually have better surfing than later when the west coast wakes up!

3)  The type of traffic.  TCP traffic requires a response for EACH and every packet.  UDP (sound / video) doesnt care.  However, if the quality is low, you will see/hear it on your end (lagging, buffering).

4)  The speed of the distant end connection to the Internet.  Usually this is quite large since they sometimes have a server farm of services (not just one site).

5)  The final factor is how busy the site is that your making a request from.  If 1000's of people are going to it, and they only have one web server, your going to once again see your speed be diminished!

If at any point you go above 60 percent on any of the above, you start to have queuing.  Think of queuing as going into a grocery store and the manger trying to guess how many people will be shopping at any given time.  He will have so many checkout counters open.  Sometimes you will be able to walk RIGHT up, other times, he might get stuck in the queue!

Try going to:

http://www.speedtest.net/

or

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

to show what speed you are really getting.  Test it on sites that are further away and you will start to see your speed fall as you hit congestion somewhere!  

I have Verizon FIOS and get 10.5 Mbps down and about 1.9 Mbps up.

If he is using Peer 2 Peer, he may have a virus using that bandwidth.  Try turning his computer on and see how much it uses?  Your first order of effort will be to tell him to NOT use so much of the bandwidth all of the time!

Answer 2

is he hardwired into the router?  if so move his connection out of slot#1 as anything in slot#1 has priorty on the router as far as doing any other limiting ask your ISP

Answer 3

you can rate limit with a Cisco 2800 but this is expensive( I would set up a time frame of when he can download) or make him pay the bulk for Internet, you may als want to increase bandwith 3.0Mbps up to 6.0Mbps

Bandwith hogs suck!!

Answer 4

You need a managed switch and to program it to allocate bandwidth using one of the allocation methods permitted.

These run over $1000 and have to be programmed and configured. The configuration is more substantial than programming a typical low end home grade router.

Adtran, Cisco, HP, 3Com and others market managed switches.