Reducing the impact of P2P users on home network

snipped-for-privacy@xinap.moc (Mike S.) wrote in news:emeqm7$oj3$ snipped-for-privacy@reader2.panix.com:

grab an old p2 box and istall m0n0wall

or pfsense on it, put it between your cable modem and the WRT54G, and use the traffic shaping rules to crush the P2P traffic. You won't prohibit it (unless you want to), but you can certainly squash it to the point where it becomes too boring for them to wait, and you can blame it on your ISP as the m0n0/pfsense box is transparent to them unless they physically look at your setup, or know what to look for. If you have an old system laying around with some extra network cards, this is the cheapest option.. its free.

The problem with modern p2p traffic is that much of the traffic is not p2p transfers, but icmp discovery and http directory exchange, which cannot be distinguished from normal icmp and http. You can limit icmp, but then you'll get dropped pings and customers will complain about your network.

We've found the best strategy for managing abusers is to control each IP/customer with an individual bandwidth profile. Our product allows you to allow users to burst only for specific periods of time, and also control the packets/second in addition to bandwidth. We've found that abusive protocols tend to have much higher pps usage than well-behaved protocols, so pps is very effective.

The concept behind per-customer control is simple: you don't allow any one user to use more than his fair share of bandwidth. Another problem with the "squash p2p" method is that users who want to download 1 or 2 songs can't do it, becuase you've generally disabled p2p on your network. If a customer subscibes to a 512K service, why shouldnt they be able to do whatever they want with their bandwidth, as long as they don't abuse it? With per customer settings, if a user chooses to fire up p2p, they only squash themselves. If they complain that they can't surf, you simply tell them to turn off the p2p program and they'll be able to surf. Its a strategy thats not only fair, its very, very effective.

Dennis Baasch Emerging Technologies, Inc.

snipped-for-privacy@etinc.com wrote in news:1167395889.320709.295340 @i12g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

That sounds all well and good, but I do know a couple of things. Each user (specific IP) can be allotted a particular total bandwidth share by using pf or m0n0. I have never done it, but I have read of it being done through the use of pipes/ queues, static DHCP and the like. Secondly, although I may have read further into it than I should have, it sounds to me as thought the OP is the subscriber, not the offending downloaders. So going on that assumption- wrong or not- it is well within his rights to throttle back the P2P traffic as much as he likes. But, if I am wrong, so be it. While your product sounds interesting, what is the cost? Is it comparable to free? There are a number of ISP's who do consider downloading one or two songs abuse... copyright infringement. But that is a topic for another group ;-)