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In our small office a LAN is connected to a modem router that will VDSL to the Internet. As a Windows 2003 R2 server exists in the LAN, I was wondering if is there a way to use this server as a router, enabling traffic shaping/QOS policies, to avoid network clogging.

  • Now: LAN clients -> Modem -> Internet
  • Future: LAN clients -> Software Router - > Modem -> Internet
Riccardo
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  • Have you verified that you're in fact having the problem that you're trying to solve? If so, how did you verify it? – joeqwerty Dec 22 '14 at 17:01
  • Well some clients on the LAN are wasting internet bandwidth sometimes. Id like to shape Internet traffic without using a dedicated hardware router, if possible – Riccardo Dec 22 '14 at 17:10
  • Define how they're wasting bandwidth? is the internet connection saturated? If it isn't then why would you want to artificially impose limits on it's use? – joeqwerty Dec 22 '14 at 17:20
  • Users randomly will saturate bandwidth. In an ideal world, the software router should assign bandwidth depending on concurrent users and available bandwidth. For example: only one user may use full bandwidth, more users will share available bandwidth – Riccardo Dec 22 '14 at 17:50

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Windows Server 2003 R2 has already hit mainstream support end-of-life a few years ago, and is scheduled for complete end-of-life in a few months. I would not use it for anything, much less a router replacement.

You're going to be much better off with an actual router or firewall.

To answer your odd question: Yes, with the right configuration and software, Windows Server 2003 R2 is capable of being used for QOS and traffic shaping.

Hyppy
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