jamband

I know this is a touchy subject in some circumstances, but I'm planning on putting a bandwidth throttling device in the network I run. The network serves a building with ground-level offices and apartments above. We offer free internet service to both residents and businesses, but we've been having some problems with music and video downloads (mostly from the apartments) clogging up the network. Can someone point me in the direction of a throttling device that won't break the bank, but works?

Just so you know, if we install a shaping device, we'll be upfront with our customers and residents about it.

Trizoy

Tell the residents it is a free service and you wont support P2P or illegal downloading program (used ofr music and movies etc). Then block the port numbers. Do you have the residents on a seperate device than the business?

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livewire

I was in a similar situation with a complex that I managed. I wanted to avoid banning P2P completely because that would have most likely hurt business since so many of our residents were college students. Instead, I put in a netequalizer box that prioritized traffic, but didn't block it completely. Like you, I was upfront about it with residents and found that it wasn't a huge problem. People are obviously still downloading, but I think they've been more aware of the bandwidth they're using (i.e., putting their own limits on uploads and downloading fewer files at once). It's reasonable price to pay for free service.

jamband

Thanks, guys.

livewire

No problem. Let me know if you have any other questions.