traffic shaping/rate limiting for dummies

[MichaelHamilton1]

Hello, I just joined the forum so please excuse my question if I'm in the wrong place. From what I've read your forum has some excellent advise fro newbies trying to set up a router. My specific problem is that we are setting up a LAN for student use that has a limited amount of bandwidth available for everyone. Our allowed slice of the 4 T1's is 256KB/s, and we were able to limit outgoing traffic using the router that we are connected to. Unfortunately that router doesn't have the capability of limiting incoming traffic, so whenever we download software updates or access streaming video from Netflix, our use hogs nearly all the bandwidth (~600KB/s). So we need a tool on our end of the network that limits our total incoming and outgoing bandwidth to 256KB/s. Any suggestions? I'm not a router expert, but I have read that CISCO routers offer a function called Controlled Access Rate. Is something like that available on a low cost router like D-Link or Netgear? Any advise would be most appreciated. Thanks.

 

[thiggins]

Welcome, Michael.

Start with:
Taming Your Network's Bandwidth Hogs - Part 1
Taming Your Network's Bandwidth Hogs - Part 2

 

[MichaelHamilton1]

Thanks, these articles are very useful. I'll let you know what I come up with.