Best way to network and control usage in a 20 student household?

[jj009]

Hi neowin forum,

I am looking to find a way to reliably connect a student house to the internet, there is a fibre connection (56mb/s) and previously with the slower connection it used to drop out and took a service to come out and flick it back on again (someone is making money somewhere) however still with that connection it still drops out now and again.

At the moment there is a router, with a switch behind it. From the switch it is wired to each room, (18) so there is a fixed line in each room, then there are 2 WiFi routers all connected to the switch.

Ideally I would like to limit the connection as I feel this would control the situation? Be it thought blocking certain types of connection (high usage ones, e.g. Torrenting) at the certain times of the day (evenings) however I do not know what the best way of doing this? Though a router and a rule set? Could it be done at a ISP level?

If anyone could suggest any equipment or any other ideas that I could use? Students do not tend to listen to the whole, don't do this at this time ect ect.

Many thanks

[sc302 Veteran]

I beleve what you want is in here. Look for budmans post.

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1134284-speed-control-for-other-users/page__pid__595499376#entry595499376

[+BudMan MVC]

"(56mb/s)"

Really a whole 56 megabits per second??

Did you mean MB? B = Bytes, b = bits

What is your current router? What is your current switch? Any smart or managed switch should support rate limiting which would be a simple way to / the bandwidth between the ports being used, even the AP ports could be rate limited, etc.. So 56MBytes / 20 would be like 2.8MBytes each... Not too shabby.

Or you could replace the router with say a firewall distro box and do some QoS along with layer 7 filtering to block protocols like p2p, or run a proxy on it to do content filtering, etc.

There are some off the shelf routers that might do some QoS or bandwidth limiting, etc. for you -- but I have never seen one do Layer7 Filtering if you want to block stuff like p2p. P2P could run on any port, and can be very difficult to block actually. Content filtering could block you from the sites used to find the links to the torrents, etc. You could lock down ports to only standard net ports 80/443, etc. But could cause issues.

Your best bet with 20 individuals is just evenly divide the bandwidth you all share and let users do whatever they want with their share.

[u2_storm]

As +BudMan said try a firewall distro, my suggestion is find an old machine, put 2 network cards it in and install pfsense (IPcop is another one I've used and found it really good)

Just an thought......

[neufuse Veteran]

"(56mb/s)"

Really a whole 56 megabits per second??

Did you mean MB? B = Bytes, b = bits

What is your current router? What is your current switch? Any smart or managed switch should support rate limiting which would be a simple way to / the bandwidth between the ports being used, even the AP ports could be rate limited, etc.. So 56MBytes / 20 would be like 2.8MBytes each... Not too shabby.

Or you could replace the router with say a firewall distro box and do some QoS along with layer 7 filtering to block protocols like p2p, or run a proxy on it to do content filtering, etc.

There are some off the shelf routers that might do some QoS or bandwidth limiting, etc. for you -- but I have never seen one do Layer7 Filtering if you want to block stuff like p2p. P2P could run on any port, and can be very difficult to block actually. Content filtering could block you from the sites used to find the links to the torrents, etc. You could lock down ports to only standard net ports 80/443, etc. But could cause issues.

Your best bet with 20 individuals is just evenly divide the bandwidth you all share and let users do whatever they want with their share.

whats wrong with 56 Megabit? sounds like what I'd expect them to have at a house, although 7MB shared across 20 users could get slow.... We have 200 unit student apartment buildings here sharing a 100Mbit fiber line..... can't imagin that is all that fast at peak time

[+BudMan MVC]

^ neufuse your right 56mbits is not all that slow.. I was thinking fiber and school campus ;) But sure 56mbits could what they are on.. Brain isn't firing on all cylinders to day I am thinking ;)

But that could be a bit slow if just rate limiting each connection.. If that is the case an on 56mbit then I would do something with QoS -- and bandwidth limiting based upon IP.. Which would allow more use of the pipe if others are not using it, like the tplink routers feature set like the article I linked too that thread sc302 linked to..

[jj009]

"(56mb/s)"

Really a whole 56 megabits per second??

Did you mean MB? B = Bytes, b = bits

What is your current router? What is your current switch? Any smart or managed switch should support rate limiting which would be a simple way to / the bandwidth between the ports being used, even the AP ports could be rate limited, etc.. So 56MBytes / 20 would be like 2.8MBytes each... Not too shabby.

Or you could replace the router with say a firewall distro box and do some QoS along with layer 7 filtering to block protocols like p2p, or run a proxy on it to do content filtering, etc.

There are some off the shelf routers that might do some QoS or bandwidth limiting, etc. for you -- but I have never seen one do Layer7 Filtering if you want to block stuff like p2p. P2P could run on any port, and can be very difficult to block actually. Content filtering could block you from the sites used to find the links to the torrents, etc. You could lock down ports to only standard net ports 80/443, etc. But could cause issues.

Your best bet with 20 individuals is just evenly divide the bandwidth you all share and let users do whatever they want with their share.

Speedtest is going with Mb/s. (In the Netherlands so that speed at a house is almost the norm?)

The router is: Cisco epc3925

Switch : Edimax es-3124rl

That was the way I was thinking of doing it, is to split the bandwidth equally! Would a managed switch be a heavy investment?

Students just love to do everything at the same time, torrenting, browsing, youtube, skypeing! And in the evenings it gets a bit much when a few people are all doing the same!

Thanks for your in depth answer.

[+BudMan MVC]

No smart switches are not normally all that pricy..

Are you in the AU area? Seems that brand likes to come up in AU for searching found a smart switch that does QoS and simple rate limiting, which would allow you to evenly split the bandwidth between each user..

http://www.edimax.com/en/produce_detail.php?pd_id=78&pl1_id=4&pl2_id=24

ES-5224RS+

24 Ports 10/100Mbps Web Smart Switch + 2 SFP Gigabit Dual Media Ports

http://www.itsdirect.com.au/com_products.php?view=detail&category_id=81&sub_category=481&Product_ID=13081&utm_source=myshopping&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Network+Products&utm_term=Edimax+ES+5224RS+Fast+Ethernet+24+Ports+Web+Smart+Switch+with+2#.URAvfPJZN00

Looks like $140 AU at the above link

[jj009]

No smart switches are not normally all that pricy..

Are you in the AU area? Seems that brand likes to come up in AU for searching found a smart switch that does QoS and simple rate limiting, which would allow you to evenly split the bandwidth between each user..

http://www.edimax.co..._id=4&pl2_id=24

ES-5224RS+

24 Ports 10/100Mbps Web Smart Switch + 2 SFP Gigabit Dual Media Ports

http://www.itsdirect...+2#.URAvfPJZN00

Looks like $140 AU at the above link

As said above I am in the NL (Netherlands) area. The main points that I would be looking for are the QoS and Simple rate limiting?

Thanks again!

[+BudMan MVC]

Sorry about that - yes you did post your region. As already stated not at the top of my game today ;) So Pricing might be a bit different in your area - but that is in the same line as your currently using and supports the QoS and rate limiting features your after.