Re: What router has Bandwidth Management ..?

krizto <krizto.32lu6l@no-mx.wirelessforums.org> hath wroth:

>Here is my little issue. My fiance's Mum always has OS Students living
>with her and they love to nail her Optus bandwitch within the first few
>days of the month and cap the speed.
>
>All the laptops are running on wireless, is there a way to limit the
>amount of data all connected PC can use in a specific period?
>
>For example, all DHCP clients are alowed 2Gb traffic for 30 days.

This is a "traffic quota". This is normally done at an ISP using
monitoring software such as MRTG, RRDTOOL, PRTL, and various ISP
billing programs. At some threshold, it simply pulls the plug on the
account until the customer can cough up more cash to support their
downloading habits.

>I don't want to limit their speed, just the amount of data they can
>download in a specific priod.

Such quota management is usually not implimented in the router. That's
because users can change their IP addresses fairly easily and ruin the
traffic accounting. Storing the logins and passwords in the router
also becomes somewhat of a bloat problem. Normally, such quota
management is done in a management workstation.

Offhand, I don't know of a specific wireless device that will do what
you're asking. However, it might exist and my sushi and saki fogged
brain isn't sufficiently functional to recall the vendor.

Until I recover, the best I can suggest is that you install a
dedicated management workstation to collect traffic statistics by MAC
address (by machine, not by IP address), and simply log the traffic.
Logging can be done by sniffing or preferably by using SNMP. Then,
split the bill according to usage. I've done this with MRTG a few
times with fairly good results. Everyone overuses the system the
first month. Then the bill arrives and they magically become more
conservative.

Search for "traffic accounting".
<http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/>
<http://www.paessler.com/prtg>
<http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/>

This looks interesting:
<http://mrts.tsdn.dk/index.php?name=hugin.tsdn.dk>
Total statistics for MRTG. The graphs shown are for the entire
network traffic, but the data can be filtered or selectively polled by
IP address or MAC address resulting in one page per MAC address (i.e.
per machine).

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Another idea to consider would be to add another wifi router, one configured
with wifi security (WPA) and setup solely for use by the guests. Then add
the traffic monitoring, MRTG works well. It'd even be possible to track the
live packet usage from the separate router and CUT IT OFF should the traffic
exceed certain amounts.

It'd end up being a bit of a configuration adventure, but you could do this
with an old PC running linux and two ethernet cards. The PC would act as a
'traffic cop'. Plug the student wifi router into one of it's ethernet
ports, and plug the other into the ISP switch. Configure the student's wifi
router as an access point, not as a gateway or a router. Then configure the
PC as a router. Then just configure the scripts on it to cut off the
ethernet port of the student wifi rig. You could get all sorts of fancy
with configuring it. You could even set it up to re-direct ALL web traffic
from the student port to a web page showing traffic stats if/when they run
over the limits.

So no, there's not one box that'll do it, at least not at a reasonable
price. But a cheapie PC with linux and some configuring would do it quite
well.

-Bill Kearney