×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Internet Bandwidth prioritising program

Internet Bandwidth prioritising program

Internet Bandwidth prioritising program

(OP)
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this, so my appologies if this ins't an appropriate post.

I was wondering if there was a piece of software (or hardware perhaps) that is capable of assigning limits on the use of your internet connection bandwidth, either proportionally or in absolute values. For example, I like to browse the internet but usually have another program downloading files in the background.  Naturally, the page loading of the internet is slower than I'd prefer due to the downloads that are going on at the same time. What I'm looking for is something that keeps an eye on what you're doing an then limit each programs use of the total bandwidth available. So while I'm activley browsing the net it knows to give say 80% of the bandwidth to IE.  Then if it detects no internet use (like while you're reading the page or making a cup of tea) it would then re-adjust and increase how much bandwidth the 'download program' can use to ensure all the bandwidth is being used efficiently. You could assign it proportional values, ie 80% / 20% splits of the total bandwitdth or absolute limits like MAX: 20k/s for a certain program.

Ok, so I could get round this by turning off programs manually, but that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid, since a PC is way better at automatically optimising complex systems than I am. The above example was a simple one with only 2 programs using the connection, but add in a few more programs that could be running all at once and it doesn't run quite as efficiently as I'd like it to.

While my request is for my home PCs another example of this is at my place of work where we have 2 LANs joined togther and also have some specialist software that is used down this link to the server on the other LAN. People are often complaining if there's a lot of internet traffic (also going down this link) that this specialist software slows down due to it's remote network access times. A similar idea could be used here to isolate/prioritise bandwidth for these software users alone regardless of what internet traffic is occuring.

Has anyone heard of something that is capable of such a task, am I missing something that is so simple and is already in use or is what I'm asking for impractical for technical reasons?

I hope I've explained things well enough and I look forward to your replies.

Thanks for your time.

Marc

RE: Internet Bandwidth prioritising program

Hi Marc,

Depending on the size of your company and your equipment there are some solutions:

Router:
You can configure the router for queuing mechanisme, that is if the router and administrator lets you. Actually this is fairly complicated. www.cisco.com

Packetshaping:
This is used for networks where you can filter and prioritize protocols for limited and efficient bandwidth usage. Mostly this done where u do not have control over your routers. But this is quite expensive. This can be done fairly simple. www.packeteer.com

I am convinced u can find the essential software for home use at www.cnet.com at the section utilities. I am having a look also cause this is quite interesting.

RE: Internet Bandwidth prioritising program

(OP)
Thanks for your reply bassie. I've had a look at your suggestions and by having a look at cnet I was able to find a few possibilities [also gave me a few more 'words' to try in google ;o) ]. I suppose I was sort of looking for something akin to 'Zone Alarm' where it just sits there and does it's stuff, with the odd user tweak now and again, but I've not managed to find it yet.

Some of the other solutions are quite expensive or too complex for a general use internet connection at home.

I thank you for your efforts, it has given me more ideas to try ...one day someone will create it, I'm positive of that.

Let me know if you find anything.

Thanks again

Marc

RE: Internet Bandwidth prioritising program

Hello Hindo, I am not sure if I understood your difficulty or not, but I liked the idea of internet bandwidth limiting on certain programs especially when useding P2P progz such as BT, Kazaa emule etc, I am trying the NetLimiter v1.25 out right now, from downloads.com (cnet).
It is a trial version, but it should help you out on limiting the internet bandwidth of the programs you are using and which are accessing internet!

Enjoy
C0d3w0rd1nG

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources