Internet sharing tips

Oriel

Hi folks,
We have a 6/7 PC LAN in house here, all the machines are XP Pro and using MS internet connection at share a 512kbps DSL connection.

Here's the thing - I'm currently waiting about 30/40 seconds for basic pages to download - I was waiting about 2-3 mins for a ebay search to quit before I thought "feck it".

Do any of you know about any network utilities for giving the stats on which internet resources are going to what machines on the network? I'd prefer to run the software on my own machine if possible, rather than the server.

Or, if possible, are there any programs to restrict, or "even out" the network sharings?
It's just that the others in the house downloading 700Mb+ files during the middle of the day, eating up the bandwidth is really starting to annoy me.

Under-handed methods welcome :-)

Cheers,
Sinecure.

secret_squirrel

there was a similar post to this a month or so ago unfortunately I cant remember anything else about it other than a bloke wanted to throttle the bandwidth on his mates who were running a Supernode - so if you do a search on that word you'll probably hit the right thread.

Oriel

Yeah, I remembered that thread and checked it before starting this. I carried on with this thread due to the fact that other thread got really off topic and people started bitching about others in their college rather than helping with the solution.

Also, I'm not looking to block ports - I'd just be shooting myself in the foot. I'm just looking to even out the bandwidth a bit more evenly, or at least just find out where it's going to...

OfflerCrocGod

You know I found ICS to be VERY poor at giving out proper bandwidth to the client PCs, on the client PC (in my set-up) getting a web page took 10 secs or more on my (server) box it took 1-2 secs at most once I got a hardware solution (router/ADSL modem) the web pages shoot up on both PCs. It may be just that the server is bogged down processing other stuff and ICS is given less priority.

GUI

winproxy 5
is a good windows based connection sharing and proxy in 1

Virus_Inc

ISA server is pretty handy, you can restrict IPs/MAC addresses to certain speeds, etc... if you have a modem plugged into a server you can use the built-in performance monitor in W2k/Xp too look at traffic in and out of the RAS port....
Had a similar prob myself where the connection would turn to custard every now and then... turns out my stupid-arse flatmate had a welchia infected laptop which was creating its own mini DOS attack on my outbound traffic.... soon got that nipped in the bud... muppet.

Rambo

Originally posted by Sinecure
Hi folks,
We have a 6/7 PC LAN in house here, all the machines are XP Pro and using MS internet connection at share a 512kbps DSL connection.
]

I have the same setup and I have being using winproxy for 3 years now
never gives trouble it also includes firewall which saved me from the blaster virus and a virus scanner optional

I typing this message on my own PC behind Winproxy at the moment
The speed of web browsing is the same if it was on the server no different
If you regular visted the same web site winproxy caches the pages for you for
even faster internet lookups great for ebay and save you on bandwith

You will find some games may not work with winproxy but all the usual games
work like half life, quake 3, unreal, Battlefield 1942 and most new games should
cater if you behind a proxy

you may have to open some ports on the firewall to the games to work.