Which DSL Modem/Router will allow me to limit wifi bandwidth?

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WGW

WGW

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Which DSL Modem/Router will allow me to limit wifi bandwidth?

I had a netgear which has some parental control and that was nice but it eventually broke and I now have a cheap ZOOM Modem/Router with wifi and I need to be able to limit WIFI bandwidth because we have very slow DSL out here in the country. Like 2mb down and 300k up. So I'd like to limit the kids phones of wifi to maybe a 1/4th of that if possible? Which DSL modem/Router would I buy as I'm not sure what I am looking for. QoS does not seem to do what I want with bandwidth.

Thanks!
 
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Ralston18
Some routers permit some prioritization of wired LAN ports - may or may not be helpful.

Here is a the NetGear link to the User Guide for NetGear Genie:

http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/genie/genie_app_UM.pdf

I scanned through it and it appears that you might have a fair amount of control via the app. However, the manual uses a higher end router with the app. There is a link to the supported routers.

I have not used a "third party" app for router control. Configure my Linksys directly via browser and IP address. Have not noted any such app for Linksys per se. Would seem redundant to me.

Genie seems focused on wireless so between that and direct router admin access you may be able to set up some "limits".

See what...
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Ralston18

Ralston18

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Since you are familar with NetGear I suggest that you go to their website and look at the DSL Modem/Routers they currently offer.

Pick one or two that seem suitable and then look in the support links for the User Guides/Manuals.

Peruse accordingly (.pdf) and look at the QoS sections.

Depending on the model you may be able to prioritize connected devices, limit bandwidth by MAC etc. along with the usual parental controls such as days and hours. (By the way, kids may know how to spoof MACs. May also need to limit access to specified MACs. And have a strong penalty in place for any hacking....)

Any limits or bandwidth restrictions may be just some crude division of the total.

If you cannot find any acceptable devices (Netgear or otherwise) then look into DD-WRT or Tomato. Both are firmware upgrades for many existing devices. Once set up on a supported device you will have more QoS functionality. Tricky process and you can brick a router.



 
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WGW

WGW

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I'm not fond of netgear after my last one stopped working shy of 2 years.

Is there no model that actually has bandwidth control? Seems like a lot of hassle to adjust all the various settings and such when really all I want to do is allow wifi just a fraction of the bandwidth.
 
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WGW

WGW

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ok I understand a it more now after reading this:

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If you mean upload rate then there are a bunch of router that have QoS that can do this.

If you mean download rate then the short answer is no it can't be done. The ISP controls which traffic is sent or dropped to your house. By the time your router gets it the data is gone, its not like your router can recreate data for what you think is the important users.

The longer answer, if you get a very advanced for of QoS you can place limits on the download speed of users. Problem is this does not work for all applications. What it is actually doing is dropping the traffic AFTER it has already used up the bandwidth. So say a user tells a server to send it data at 2m/sec and your router limits the traffic to 1m/sec by dropping 1/2 the packets. From the end user perspective he is only getting 1m/sec but he is actually still using 2m/sec of the bandwidth coming to the house. Unless the user application responds to this data loss by asking the server to send at a slower rate it will make no difference. Some applications send at a certain rate no matter what you do. Games tend to be the best example although some forms of video stream also do. In these cases if the amount of data is more than you want to allow the only way it will work is if the extra loss your router is introducing is so bad that the person using the application gets mad and completely stops. If they choose to tolerate the extra data loss the limitation will have no effect, they will continue to use up the bandwidth

The higher ASUS and TPLINK routers as well as many of the third party firmware have QoS that can be configured to limit inbound bandwidth by user to fixed values. It truly depends on how the user application responds. It partially works but you will still get burst of data at much higher rates from these users until the software figures out it can't run that fast. It works ok on a larger connection that can tolerate these burst of traffic but on very small connections it it a total waste of time.

------------------------------

So looks like I'm rather stuck with using something like "NETGEAR Genie" which was a nice little software deal in limiting what people can visit over the web. So I guess I should ask which other companies have software like this included with their DSL modem/Routers?
 
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Ralston18

Ralston18

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Some routers permit some prioritization of wired LAN ports - may or may not be helpful.

Here is a the NetGear link to the User Guide for NetGear Genie:

http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/genie/genie_app_UM.pdf

I scanned through it and it appears that you might have a fair amount of control via the app. However, the manual uses a higher end router with the app. There is a link to the supported routers.

I have not used a "third party" app for router control. Configure my Linksys directly via browser and IP address. Have not noted any such app for Linksys per se. Would seem redundant to me.

Genie seems focused on wireless so between that and direct router admin access you may be able to set up some "limits".

See what you can do and if that is not enough then consider another router. Hopefully someone else following this thread will be able to offer a specific make and model meeting your requirements. If so you can check into that product accordingly.
 
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