Monitoring data traffic for a download box

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  [Deactivated] on 04/09/2016 - 10:55

  +1

  I think you're overthinking your requirements - you probably just want to prioritize surfing (http/etc) traffic over torrents/usenet/ftp. That should cover 80% of your requirements. Also with NBNs alleged speed, most of your downloads would finish in a few minutes anyway.

  Check the QoS settings on the NBN modem/router. If you can't do it on the NBN router, then you can buy another router that can do it. You could also look at DD-WRT/OpenWRT/Tomato based router.

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    [Deactivated] on 04/09/2016 - 11:36

    I think you're oversimplifying my requirements!

    Can QoS differentiate between torrenting on my parent's PC and mine? There will be other activities that I didn't mention such as ripping fhd/4k contents via non-torrent means. Mirroring parent's PC (job critical and large) data to local, and upload to cloud when traffic is idle, etc, etc.

    (Admittedly I did even not bother checking QoS on their NBN modem) Will have a look at Qos settings next time I'm over but suspect it'll not handle all my needs, I'm quite certain there's software solutions for this purpose that can be fine tuned to do everything? Trying to make the setup clever and automated and requiring minimal manual intervention, it should be able to scale whether I'm downloading 5GB or 500GB.

    The PC was $25 and I had a spare HDD lying around, a router with more functions is kinda-but-not-entirely out of the question, however will it provide the exact flexibility that I require?

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      [Deactivated] on 04/09/2016 - 21:20

      I think you're oversimplifying my requirements!

      You'll finish up with suboptimal performance if you try to implement all the things you mentioned. You should just prioritize the http traffic so your parents have a seamless surfing experience. Let everything else fight it out for bandwidth. NBN is fast - you'll find that the hard disk on your $25 computer, wifi, etc will all become a bottleneck before your NBN bandwidth is exhausted.

      Can QoS differentiate between torrenting on my parent's PC and mine?

      Yes - most routers will let you apply a higher priority to a specific IP, then priorities torrent vs http traffic.

      The PC was $25 and I had a spare HDD lying around, a router with more functions is kinda-but-not-entirely out of the question, however will it provide the exact flexibility that I require?

      You could always install linux on it and use it as a router. That will give you the ultimate flexibility. DD-WRT will let you do most of the same as well.

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  bjdchwr on 04/09/2016 - 10:58

  +1

  I think you need either a more powerful router with QoS or you need to setup a routeros alike platform.

  I am an IT guy so I use Cisco device at home - their SOHO level range… I wouldn't recommend you to do that as it requires a fair bit of knowledge for setting it up.

  I would suggest you purchasing a decent router (or tweakable router and have Tomato or DD-WRT installed) and use their QoS functions - they are user friendly and a lot less hassle.

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    PLA74 on 04/09/2016 - 12:27

    Can I ask what Cisco device/router you use at home please? I'm looking to upgrade mine (currently a standard ISP provided one). Thanks!

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      bjdchwr on 04/09/2016 - 14:00

      I am currently using 1941 with my old HWIC-1ADSL card - the chipset is not Broadcom so the performance is not optimal. I was using 1841 but 1941 is better because they have nbar2 - better/easier for QoS.

      I got my 1941 around $500 last year but I've seen some decent deals on eBay for around $200-ish. I think 1941 is still capable doing 100M NBN things but I would imagine the CPU usage would be fluctuated. Cisco routers are not good at doing NAT so a proper ASA firewall would be suitable for heavy NAT settings.

      I've done some SNR tweak so I still get similar Downlink speed (~12Mbit - 2Km from DSLAM) compared to Broadcom (around 12.5-13Mbit).

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  bdl on 04/09/2016 - 11:10

  +1

  Or just hammer the connection when your parents are asleep (some torrenting programs allow you to schedule this, for example when you are downloading linux ISOs)

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    [Deactivated] on 04/09/2016 - 11:41

    That's too manual and the torrent schedules are not flexible. They can go to sleep at 10pm or 1am, they may come home and steam some shows for hours or read paper and faff about for the evening, or have Monday or Thursday off at home, etc, etc.

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  [Deactivated] on 04/09/2016 - 11:52

  Simply install a bandwidth limiting router in the mix
  should be able to set time frames and limit the data coming from the NBN link
  or better yet potentially get your own connection on the NBN box and go nuts :)
  they allow up to 4x connections per ntd

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  [Deactivated] on 04/09/2016 - 17:31

  You don't need TeamViewer to add torrents.
  Most clients support the adding of torrents remotely.

  uTorrent allows me to get a torrent file on my mobile phone and it loads it on the PC and it starts to download it.