# Is it possible to limit Torrent Download Speed through the router?



## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Sep 1, 2010)

Were planning to have one internet connection in the house, and will be sharing it through a wireless router(none yet as of now).. Some of my housemates are heavy torrent downloaders, up fear that it might eat up my multiplayer bandwidth. Is there a way to limit the download/upload torrent speed in the router (something like setting it to 30KBps for dl, 10 KBps for upload on all torrents of each client)?


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## Mussels (Sep 1, 2010)

no there isnt, even if you go fancy/advanced with a smoothwall, it doesnt work well enough - torrents are DESIGNED to break past encryption and throttling.


either convince them to use settings that dont impact on the network, or make them get another connection.

Here, we just use schedulers so torrents only download when no one is home (or everyones asleep)


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## Bundy (Sep 1, 2010)

I really am guessing but maybe one of these might work? You take the priority port and plug your housemates into the rest?


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## Mussels (Sep 1, 2010)

wow, that is an awesome lookin giga switch


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## caleb (Sep 1, 2010)

Traffic shaping doesn't always work as you want it to because the router needs to receive stuff before it can tell what it is and what priority should it have so its kinaa hard with incoming traffic. Works pretty good with limiting uploads tho which lag the most, so if they wont leech 24/7 and don't set crazy client limits you should be ok. It won't ever be as lag free as on a totally 'leecher free' connection tho.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Sep 1, 2010)

Ok thanks.. I was fancying that torrent data might be using a certain protocol which can be filtered for shaping XD. And not affect other protocol (http, soap etc) Im such a noob at networking lol..

In anycase, bundy gave me an idea.. lol. register my mac to make it have higher bandwidth than the rest.. (im sure I saw that setting somewhere in the router cp)


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## Mussels (Sep 1, 2010)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> Ok thanks.. I was fancying that torrent data might be using a certain protocol which can be filtered for shaping XD. And not affect other protocol (http, soap etc) Im such a noob at networking lol..
> 
> In anycase, bundy gave me an idea.. lol. register my mac to make it have higher bandwidth than the rest.. (im sure I saw that setting somewhere in the router cp)



they use UDP mostly, and UTP lately.


the problem is that games use UDP as well, so yeah... screwed.


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## angelkiller (Sep 1, 2010)

Just make traffic from your ip have a higher priority than any other traffic. Then you don't have to worry about filtering traffic. Everything you do is automaticaly made priority. And filtering by ip isn't hard. (as compared to filtering out torrent traffic)

Pic of setting in DD-WRT


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## Mussels (Sep 1, 2010)

angelkiller said:


> Just make traffic from your ip have a higher priority than any other traffic. Then you don't have to worry about filtering traffic. Everything you do is automaticaly made priority. And filtering by ip isn't hard. (as compared to filtering out torrent traffic)



priority (QOS) doesnt help - i've tried.

yeah, it gives your shit the higher priority - but if the pipes choked completely (which hundreds of torrent connections will do), being first in line is still lagging.


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## angelkiller (Sep 1, 2010)

Mussels said:


> priority (QOS) doesnt help - i've tried.
> 
> yeah, it gives your shit the higher priority - but if the pipes choked completely (which hundreds of torrent connections will do), being first in line is still lagging.


Hmmmm. I'll have to give it a whirl later today. Works in theory.


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## Mussels (Sep 1, 2010)

i'm the heavy torrent user, and the network admin here in this household.. and all i can say is that restricting torrents is a nightmare.


easiest way is to get em to agree to set times to schedule it, like say, 2am to 10am is torrent time, so hammer it then.


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## scaminatrix (Sep 1, 2010)

I know in the UK ISP's prioritise certain traffic without any action from the user (you).
Have a google, you should find something relevant to your country/area.
In UK, ISP's give best bandwidth to:
1. VOIP and IM,
2. Gaming, 
3. Downloading,
4. Browsing 
(In that order).
There is more there, I just can't remember and I'm on 56k so I can't scout the net at the mo.

You won't be able to limit them easily, but they are 90% likely not to interfere with your gaming anyway (If I'm right).


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## slyfox2151 (Sep 1, 2010)

Mussels said:


> i'm the heavy torrent user, and the network admin here in this household.. and all i can say is that restricting torrents is a nightmare.
> 
> .



+1 im in the same boat at you 




uploads is what really kills your connection more then downloads.... make sure they set the upload speed under 70% of the total avalible.. and cap there total torrent connections to 150 or less.


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## Mussels (Sep 1, 2010)

scaminatrix said:


> I know in the UK ISP's prioritise certain traffic with any action from the user (you).
> Have a google, you should find something relevant to your country/area.
> In UK, ISP's give best bandwidth to:
> 1. VOIP and IM,
> ...



that helps the ISP out, but it doesnt help him locally, since its his router/pipe thats choking.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 1, 2010)

I use a WRT54GL + Tomato to use QoS to limit the bandwidth on certain ports.

Torrent traffic is still going to use a single port.

So find what ports they are using, which won't be hard since they will probably want the ports open on the router, and setup a QoS rule to limit bandwidth on those port.

Of course the connection can still be overloaded with connections from the torrent program, so they have to limit the number of connections they use.


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## Mussels (Sep 1, 2010)

newtekie1 said:


> I use a WRT54GL + Tomato to use QoS to limit the bandwidth on certain ports.
> 
> Torrent traffic is still going to use a single port.
> 
> So find what ports they are using, which won't be hard since they will probably want the ports open on the router, and setup a QoS rule to limit bandwidth on those port.



actually, for a while there torrents DIDNT use a single port. thankfully, they tend to now.


the problem here is that if he limits the ports, they're just gunna change ports to get better speeds - if they were willing to play nice,they'd be willing to lower speeds/connections/schedule, in the first place.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 1, 2010)

Mussels said:


> actually, for a while there torrents DIDNT use a single port. thankfully, they tend to now.
> 
> 
> the problem here is that if he limits the ports, they're just gunna change ports to get better speeds - if they were willing to play nice,they'd be willing to lower speeds/connections/schedule, in the first place.



Thats why you make the rule apply to all ports higher than 1024.  So it doesn't matter what port they change to or try to use, it will always be limitted.


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Sep 1, 2010)

Mussels said:


> actually, for a while there torrents DIDNT use a single port. thankfully, they tend to now.
> 
> 
> the problem here is that if he limits the ports, they're just gunna change ports to get better speeds - if they were willing to play nice,they'd be willing to lower speeds/connections/schedule, in the first place.


Correct.. and even if qos worked, theyl just log in the router and change it back lol. Guess best way to do it is imposing houshold rules (which just get forgotten anyways after a few days) :-/


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## newtekie1 (Sep 1, 2010)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> Correct.. and even if qos worked, theyl just log in the router and change it back lol. Guess best way to do it is imposing houshold rules (which just get forgotten anyways after a few days) :-/



So change the password to something they don't know.

If they don't like it they can get their own dedicated connection.


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## WhiteLotus (Sep 1, 2010)

Get everyone to use uTorrent and cap download speeds?


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Sep 2, 2010)

newtekie1 said:


> So change the password to something they don't know.
> 
> If they don't like it they can get their own dedicated connection.



Theyd just press the hard reset on the router I guess



WhiteLotus said:


> Get everyone to use uTorrent and cap download speeds?


Not possible (making them use only utorrent that is) ..

thing is, housemates are not my relatives.. were just a bunch of random guys and gals renting the house, camraderie is evident but rules are non existent


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## inferKNOX (Sep 2, 2010)

If using µTorrent, just set the scheduler to "limited" for all the times you need bandwidth, and set the max upload and download speed for limited speed.
If they use Vuze, there is similar capping capabilities on the global maximum upload and download speeds.
Don't know about the rest, but they should all have the settings. If they don't, they should dump them!

IMHO the only way you're gonna be able to do this if QoS fails you, is to have the global maximum number of connections set and the global maximum upload and download rate set on each users' computer to something that gives leeway to you.


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## newtekie1 (Sep 2, 2010)

Bjorn_Of_Iceland said:


> Theyd just press the hard reset on the router I guess
> 
> 
> Not possible (making them use only utorrent that is) ..
> ...



Have you tried just sitting down with your housemates...and beating them?


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## caleb (Sep 2, 2010)

Well if its impossible to administer the network then youre screwed.

One thing that comes to my mind is using 2nd router. 
Example :

Internet 2mbit/100kbit 
  |
Router A
 ------> Your PC
 ------> Router B --> QoS set to max 1.5mbit/50kbit----> rest of leechers

Capping B will leave some space for Router A to handle your PC request without any queue so you should be lag free.


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