ozzy

We have a small issue with individuals hogging all of our internet bandwidth. I've had a quiet word and blocked stuff like Kazaa, Bearshare, etc..

I'm happy for them to kick this stuff off overnight, but it has a severe impact on our Internet bandwidth and since we rely heavily on external e-mail with clients it's a big no no.

I've had friendly chats, but some are starting to take the pi$$ and a slap in the mouth is bound to get me the sack and not them

We are running Squid proxy and everyone is forced to use that for HTTP/FTP, but even a legit download will hog all the bandwidth.

Are there any products that will

a) provide a live monitor of internet usage. Ideally something that will show a graph and how much bandwidth is being consumed. So, if someone was downloading a patch from Microsoft, it would show as 90%, then smtp would appear as 5%, and so on.

b) allocate certain bandwidth to different protocols. So, I could assign 50% to smtp, then say 25% to http and 25% to ftp.

The only problem I see with the bandwidth stuff is being able to differentiate downloads (via http) to http browsing

Stefan

ozzy

Yeah, I've used Packateer at my old work (reseller). Trouble is the company are tighter than a ducks whatsit.

I was hoping I could download some eval software and show them exactly how big of a problem we have before talking figures to fix it.

Stefan

Andrewza

FreeBSD or OpenBSD and IPFW or PF with pipes, can restrict each machine to eating up a maximum amount of bandwidth, all free, just need a oldish pc that won't die with a couple of NICs in...

Jeff Wiltshire

Some firewalls have a level of QoS/CoS built in (SonicWALL & Netscreen) and Checkpoint can do it using Floodgate. The iSurfboxes do QoS as well but have the advantage of load-balance & Fail-Over. Give me a shout if you want to know more.....

ozzy

Thanks guys. Looks like I've some more investigating to do.

Might be simpler just to give the users a good slap

Stefan

Jeff Wiltshire

There are products around that will assign Bandwidth based on Protocol and source IP address....ie the Boss's HTTP has the highest priority and so on down the food chain.

Packeteer is the usual one that companies use but it is pricey.

An alternative is to use something link a Amplify.net iSurfJanus box (herewhich allows you to add an ADSL or other broadband circuit to you existing Internet Connection. You can then assign specific protocols to specific links ....ie all HTTP via the ADSL circuit and keep the lease-line free for SMTP +whatever else. Prices start from £500 for the 2 WAN link box.



[Edited by Jeff Wiltshire - 6/12/2003 3:23:48 PM]