Bandwidth hogs
Bandwidth hogs
Have you ever noticed that your internet connection goes really slowly, even though you're not downloading anything? Because of the way most asymmetric broadband connections are set up, if you saturate the upload bandwidth, downloads become almost impossible.
This is because of the way the traffic is queued by the modem and the ISP. Even the slowest and lowest-bandwidth operations, like using a remote shell or looking up a DNS address, become painfully slow or time out. If you're using something like a BitTorrent client to upload, you can limit the upload rate, which avoids this problem. Some other programs, like rsync, have a similar feature, but many do not. Also, running two such programs will still cause problems, if each has been told it can use 90% of your upstream bandwidth.
One solution is a handy script called Wonder Shaper, which uses the tc (traffic control) command to limit overall bandwidth usage to slightly below the maximum available. Get it from http://lartc.org/wondershaper, put the wshaper script somewhere in your path - /usr/ local/bin is a good choice -and edit the start of the script to suit your system. Set DOWNLINK and UPLINK to just below your maximum bandwidth (in kilobits/s) and run it. You should now find that heavy uploads, like putting photos on Flickr, no longer drag your modem to its knees. When you're happy with the settings, set it to run at boot with whatever method your distro uses.
0 comments:
Post a Comment