Networks How can I manage bandwidth, so each user gets a fair share of our cap.

As the topic states, we have a 10gB data cap, and 5 users. Now what I would like to do is give everyone 2gB, then after they have reached that slow them down to 64k. (that is currently what our isp does when we hit our 10gB data cap). I dont have a clue where to start (windows, or linux is one question), and would really appreciate some help. Even links in the right direction. And we have a server atm, (currently just sharing some common files that everyone uses a bit, and has plenty of power to spare.).
Thanks in advance.
Nick

 

I guess you are looking for Quality of Service and Bandwith Shaping. Both can be done by replacing your router with an IPCop / Smoothwall-smoothguardian setup. I prefer the former, because it's 100%freeware, but they are forks, so they are in essence the same.

 

Smoothwall is also about as free and OS as you're gonna get

 

In my experience a QOS box will only manage how much bandwidth each user gets at any point in time (split a 2mb line so each of your 5 users gets 400kbs each), it won't say limit each user to have a download quota of 2Gb per month and then limit there transfer speed.

 

I'm sure something simple could be (and probably already has been) written to keep track of how much each user has downloaded, and enable the bandwidth limit after the amount is reached

 

True. Only throttling users once they're reached X Gbs is a harder task. You need some sort of reporting DB to record all usage. I'd be surprised if Smoothwall, etc could do this.

 

Are you offering?

 

iirc smoothwall logs how much data each users has used, or at least keeps a track of their bandwidth usage throughout the day? This can be used to predict usage. Can't be such a difficult task to setup something to auotmatically enable a bandwidth limit

Haha, maybe. If I find myself bored after exams and the like

 

I've had a quick look through the smoothwall mods section and can't find an off the shelf mod to suit your needs.

That was a mod I installed so we could see who was stealing all the bandwidth. It produced graphs of total usage for the past X hrs. I guess you could use these figures to calculate usage since the begining of the month and apply a QoS accordingly. What are your bash/perl skills like Who_me_33?

 

Smoothwall / smoothguardian surely offers this. I recon IPCop also does...

 

why dont you ask on the forums for those distros. i think they would be able to tell you a lot quicker then here and somebody might even be working on it.