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Need help managing bandwidth with a WRV210

techstorm
Level 1
Level 1

At our office there are two IT guys me and Chris. I use a desktop PC and Chris uses a laptop. We have a T3 line connected to a Linksys WRV210, which is updated to the latest firmware, and a small staff with about 8 desktop computers total. I started noticing that I was having issues downloading files from the internet. It would take sometimes 30 minutes to download a 5mb driver file. Come back after lunch the same file would download in 3 minutes. Also during certain times of the day I could do a bandwidth test and it might show high and then later it would be slower than dial up.

One common event I began to pickup on was the absence of Chris. When he would leave the office (and usually take his laptop with him). The internet was fine. However, almost immediately upon his return the internet would come to a crawl. I have asked him if he is downloading anything thinking maybe that was the issue. Of course he said he was not and that the internet was fine on his computer.

Then one day as I walked by his desk I saw Limewire running on his computer (a file sharing program). I am pretty sure now that this is the source of our bandwidth problem. I want to be able to block or at least allocate how much bandwidth gets used for things such as file sharing programs. The hard part is we are not an enterprise level business and therefore cannot afford appliances that cost thousands of dollars. Add that to the fact that file sharing programs are notorious for being tricky to manage let alone block and you can see my dilemma. Can someone please recommend a way to control or prevent Chris from killing our bandwidth? I want to use our router since he does not have the admin password or a key to the room it is in (my office). His laptop is currently using the wireless and is setup for DHCP. However, I need to know he cannot simply get around any efforts by simply using a static IP address. Keep in mind he is not the average user and is a very skilled tech.

2 Replies 2

mpyhala
Level 7
Level 7

If you can isolate your friend to one port of the router it is very simple to set up Port-based QoS. Changing the Ingress and Egress rate of the port that he is connected to to 128K or 256K will put a huge dent in his file sharing fun. You can also set that port for Low Priority. I have tested and verified that this works well on the WRV210. I do not have it in front of me now, if you need more information please reply and I will look further into this.

Thank you for your reply. I did some more research on it and found that Limewire supports PnP and will auto switch to using other ports if the main ports (6346-6347) are blocked. In my efforts to stop him I even forwarded 6346-6347 to an IP for our network copier hoping it might interfere with it and so far it has not. I'm not sure that Limewire is not going to be easy to block.  Based on what I've read it may even use port 80 if all other ports are blocked.

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