How can I restrict my mates to stop downloading?

We are sharing an internet broadband connection with 6 users at a place we live. We get 20 gb fup ( Fair usage policy) with 2 mbps speed from the ISP after the 20 gb is consumed the speed comes down to 512 kbps very difficult to browse any page.

The problem is we cannot track which user/mate is downloading and ending the FUP. it is very difficult to track so is there something that we can allot per user some amount of space like 2 gb of downloading or restrict all from downloading so that we can utilize all the fup till the end of the month.

We are using this connection as wifi configured. A adsl router is configured as wifi and we all using all 6 laptops. No PC.

Any help would be appreciated. I apologize if i am not clear with my question.

user239295

Posted 2013-11-07T08:19:49.623

Reputation: 41

Answers

Most common routers have a statistics page where it shows the IP Address or Hostname of the device and how much traffic is going from and to the device.

You can use wireshark to see what the traffic is, e.g. torrents / streaming.

If they are personal laptops, they would most likely indicate there name within the hostname of the device on the routers webpage.

Now you know who is hogging all the bandwidth, your router may allow bandwidth management, if this is the case then just cap that device. If not you can use the web filter on the router and block access to links containing certain words as such. E.g. torrents, tracker, announce

Ash King

Posted 2013-11-07T08:19:49.623

Reputation: 1 175

How to access the router's webpage? – user239295 – 2013-11-07T09:35:06.543

open up command prompt (press the windows button + the letter r) then type in cmd and hit enter. Type in ipconfig into the black box. You need the default gateway IP address - it should be 192.168.0.1 or something similar. Type that into your web browser and navigate to that webpage where you can login to it. – Ash King – 2013-11-07T09:40:49.237

I get "Login Incorrect" error message. – user239295 – 2013-11-07T09:50:36.657

check the underneath the router, it will tell you what the username / password is. The one I supplied is the default one for that router. – Ash King – 2013-11-07T09:51:21.390

yes i got the username and password. – user239295 – 2013-11-07T09:55:53.537

where can i enter this login info? – user239295 – 2013-11-07T10:02:13.873

At the same place you were trying to enter. Re-read 5 comments up. – Ash King – 2013-11-07T10:03:38.177

when i enter the default gateway into the web browser it navigates to a page where this error message is displayed and no login option is available on that page. it says "username and password is incorrect. Please refer to the troubleshooting below". the webpage contains only this information no login option. – user239295 – 2013-11-07T10:08:04.153

Look at possible options on your DSL router, there is usualy some simple QOS and statistics based upon MAC/IP address of PC. You may post type of your router.

If you don't want to or router doesn't support that functionality, you may look at this or similar device. It's cheap and sufficient to set simple rules for users, like limiting ports that can be used, bandwidth for user and it creates statistics for each computer.

week

Posted 2013-11-07T08:19:49.623

Reputation: 3 128

You can read this article here to know more about Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and how it can be used to obtain network traffic statistics using various programs like FREE Real-Time Bandwidth Monitor,Flowalyzer,Simple Traffic Monitoretc. For this you have to enable SNMP in your router.

From the network statistics you will be able to identify the mate hogging your bandwidth and can physically confront with him to reduce his network usage.

Ashildr

Posted 2013-11-07T08:19:49.623

Reputation: 2 574