Best Solution to throttle traffic and manage bandwidth on my network

frombehind

Honorable
Feb 18, 2012
351
0
10,810
I have a satellite link that needs to be shared among about 10 people - trouble is, the link is very slow (1 megabit) and there is a daily limit of just 3 gigabytes a day.

After doing some diligent research... I was able to come up with several solutions that may work for me:

Best so far is:

Antamedia Bandwidth Manager
www.antamediabandwidth.com

This allows me to do EXACTLY what I want... but they want 150 bucks for their software - AND to get NAT you need to pay 350 bucks.



Then there is a free firewall:

SmoothWall Express
http://www.smoothwall.org/

But this option was not specifically designed for traffic shaping, and you have to use obscure plugins and linux code to MAYBE get it working...



So 2 questions:

1. Has anyone had experience (good or bad) with Antamedia... and do I REALLY need the NAT on a network of 10-15 computers?

2. Does anyone have any suggestions for a better (or cheaper) way to accomplish this. Limiting bandwidth per user is nice, since the network is large, and the pipe is so small... but daily quota limits are a must have - I really dont want to deal with one of my users "forgetting to turn off their bittorent" and burning though the entire days allotment of bandwidth in 2 hours.
 

umm@gumma

Honorable
Apr 9, 2012
40
0
10,540
10-15 computers usually equals small budget so maybe the 25 dollar one might be your best bet. I'd make a squid proxy. Most small business are running at least esxi compatible software, which means the servers are virtualized anyway. Boot up your favorite distro in a vm and have complete control over not only bandwidth limitations, but also content caching and user access logging.

If you don't have esxi running i'm sure it will be hard to justify a new server build, though it could be an opportunity to pitch the idea management.
 

frombehind

Honorable
Feb 18, 2012
351
0
10,810
This is not for a server type setup... these will be individual users connecting, almost internet-cafe style.

And thanks tig, I will check out that netpeeker thing

:D
 

techrajeev

Honorable
Apr 16, 2012
7
0
10,520
1. You can purchase a wifi hotspot solution to control the usage and bandwidth. Or you can set it up by yourself by integrating Radius Server and CoovaAP firmware for a compatible router. There are ready made solution available but should pay.

2. Buy one router which can control the bandwidth and total usage. I have seen some routers before but dont remember now. But it is sure it is there and i will update here if i remember it again
 

frombehind

Honorable
Feb 18, 2012
351
0
10,810
I am kind-of trying to stay under 1000 bucks on this one... Both of those options seem really expensive - i haven't even come across this "wifi hotspot solution" that you speak of in my reaserch, and I have had people tell me that CISCO routers that support what I am trying to do cost well into $10,000 - this is way beyond my budget... especially when some of the stuff I have seen are windows and Linux products that "claim to be able to do it" for about 50-500 bucks
 

sk1939

Distinguished
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-BlueCoat-Packetshaper-PS1700-L000M-0mb-PACKETSEEKER-Rev-9-1-1-/130664387969?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e6c345581

Look for a packet shaping appliance. Also, a lot of advanced firewalls have bandwidth control ability, as do some layer 3 switches.

The Antamedia does exactly what you want, so you might as well pay the money for it. As far as NAT goes, you can get any plain old router or firewall and have that do NAT as well, or you could run something like ClearOS or Smoothwall Express and have that do NAT.