[Miniryu]

So the guys running the network in our house are being a bunch of @$$holes. they keep shutting my internet off because they say my bittorrents are slowing down the network. i only run one bittorrent at a time, and have not experienced any network slow down on either of my computers.

they, on the other hand, play World of Warcraft all day long (often skipping class). I am willing to bet that they use far more bandwidth week-by-week than I do. when they experience network slow down i am willing to bet it is durring their bandwidth intense games (there is about 7 of them that play) that they experience any slow down.

So my question is- how can i show that they are using an unfair amount of bandwidth? I know I can use Network Utility or something to monitor network activity, but I am not exactly sure what to look for. I am net-literate enough to kno the difference between a MAC address and an IP and stuff like that, but beyond there I am stuck.

[Turnpike]

Games use VERY LITTLE bandwidth. Especially compared to BitTorrent. Heck, with a decent torrent (more seeding bandwidth than leeching bandwidth) I believe you could pretty much saturate any pipe.

They're right. BT slows down the network. A lot. Gaming doesn't.

Here at my school, BT is throttled (not shut off) to keep the network from getting clogged. Games are actually given priority (yes, games are given priority at my school) because they take up so little bandwidth it doesn't hurt to give them priority, but they need what little bandwidth they use to be responsive.

EDIT:

if you are all on the same hub, you could use Ethereal (or something similar) to packet sniff and theoretically you could sort through the packets and see how much is being used by the respective uses. Of course, this is at best highly rude, and I would be surprised if it weren't illegal. Plus, I have no idea how you'd get anything out of it... I suppose you could add up the sizes of all the packets that come through...

if you are on a switched hub that won't work.


oh, and you say there are many of them playing games as if it is unfair that the 7 of them or however many there are get more bandwidth than the one of you. Even with that logic, I wouldn't be surprised if you were using more bandwidth than they are using -combined-.

Your best bet is to find some way to limit how much bandwidth you can use... cap yourself, either at your own computer if this is possible, or through wherever everything is going through (where they are currently shutting you off from). Cap yourself at something reasonable, but not too low (unless you were doing it as a gesture of good-will towards the others)... say if there are 20 of you, cap yourself at 10% of the total bandwidth... if there are five of you, cap yourself at something like 30. Then you should only run into problems at peak times, and I'm sure you'd have the decency to not do a bunch of heavy downloading during peak times.

[onryou]

Originally posted by Turnpike:
Games use VERY LITTLE bandwidth. Especially compared to BitTorrent. Heck, with a decent torrent (more seeding bandwidth than leeching bandwidth) I believe you could pretty much saturate any pipe.

They're right. BT slows down the network. A lot. Gaming doesn't.

Here at my school, BT is throttled (not shut off) to keep the network from getting clogged. Games are actually given priority (yes, games are given priority at my school) because they take up so little bandwidth it doesn't hurt to give them priority, but they need what little bandwidth they use to be responsive.

EDIT:

if you are all on the same hub, you could use Ethereal (or something similar) to packet sniff and theoretically you could sort through the packets and see how much is being used by the respective uses. Of course, this is at best highly rude, and I would be surprised if it weren't illegal. Plus, I have no idea how you'd get anything out of it... I suppose you could add up the sizes of all the packets that come through...

if you are on a switched hub that won't work.


oh, and you say there are many of them playing games as if it is unfair that the 7 of them or however many there are get more bandwidth than the one of you. Even with that logic, I wouldn't be surprised if you were using more bandwidth than they are using -combined-.

Your best bet is to find some way to limit how much bandwidth you can use... cap yourself, either at your own computer if this is possible, or through wherever everything is going through (where they are currently shutting you off from). Cap yourself at something reasonable, but not too low (unless you were doing it as a gesture of good-will towards the others)... say if there are 20 of you, cap yourself at 10% of the total bandwidth... if there are five of you, cap yourself at something like 30. Then you should only run into problems at peak times, and I'm sure you'd have the decency to not do a bunch of heavy downloading during peak times.

He is totally right about BT. They HOG bandwidth. At my house I had one BT going and everyone else could barly surf the web, it was like they was on 28.8. So, I just waited till late night to start my torrents. I know that isn't really the answer ya wanted to hear but its true. I also doubt their bandwidth is greater than your BT d/l.

onryou

[Miniryu]

Crap. o well. I'd be willing to cap my bandwidth, if I knew how. I don't need instant files (I watch naruto once a week) and I am never home to begin with, so I could leave it running all the time up/downloading only a little at a time.