Setting up home wifi network with bandwidth limits

Question

I have a 250Mbps home network and I want to set up a router with per-device or per-subnet bandwidth limits so certain users don't consume all bandwidth. Is this possible?

Although I'd prefer an all-in-one device that supports docsis and wifi with bandwidth caps, I'd be willing to buy separate devices if needed. But I'm not sure if even this would work since throttling by the ISP might still occur on high-bandwidth downloads before traffic even reaches my home network.

Answer 1

Sounds like you're looking for Quality of Service (QoS) like the Tomato firmware has:

What is QoS (Quality of Service)?

The term QoS is an acronym for Quality-of-Service. QoS rules allow you to throttle data based on the priority of applications and the type of data being transferred. In my opinion, the QoS feature within Tomato is one if its greatest strengths. It actually adds to the list of reasons why I prefer Tomato firmware over other solutions.

QoS rules give priority to more “important” traffic. If you are the only user of your Internet service, then you probably don’t need to concern yourself with QoS. But if you have a home or office full of people, setting QoS rules can improve the experience for everyone. If you discover that someone on your network is abusing the bandwidth (excessive downloads, etc), you may also need to setup a bandwidth limiter or block those websites entirely.

Getting the settings "just right" may not be as easy as it looks, I got the feeling it was more art than science, but a web search should have plenty of ideas, such as this one The best QoS for Gaming and Everything else! Tomato

And of course you need a router with QoS enabled firmware, I think most of the OpenWRT (their "archive" for QoS)& DD-WRT based ones probably do.