Control over BSKYB router

[Andeh13]

Long story short, i live with 4 other lads in a student house. We have the sky max package running at 6mb and we are all very internet based. One of the lads has taken up downloading on both his computer & his laptop, grinding the internet to a halt when he does so. The 4 of us are getting a tad fed up of having to constantly asking him to turn his downloads off multiple times a day, and getting randomly dropped from online games due to our pings suddenly sky rocketing when he turns them back on 20mins later.

Is there anyway i can block his laptop from using the internet? Its a tad harsh i know, but enough is enough & its getting beyond silly now. Myself and the 3 other lads have asked him nicely, asked him sternly and told him he can still download on either his laptop or PC, just not both as a compromise. Each time he agrees, then turns his downloads back on.

I do have access to his laptop (he leaves it downloading 24/7 in his room, when he goes to uni/work) but i would rather not fiddle with the settings on it specifically.

Iv gone through the sky router's settings and disabled 'enable wireless access point' and enabled 'wireless isolation' (in varying combination of them both) but neither of them seem to help. Id rather not disable the entire wireless network, but if i have to is there a way i can?


thanks for the help guys

[shaithis]

Does the router have QoS (Quality of Service) settings anywhere that you can see?

If so, you can set it up so that your gaming traffic gets priority and then he can use what ever is left, which is a far more elegant solution to the problem.

[mycarsavw]

Set the router up to only allow certain IP addresses (MAC, I meant MAC!) to connect.

Or just change both the wireless and the router passwords.

[Saracen]

Whose Sky account is it? Is it in all your names (which would surprise me), or just one nominal account name?

If it's one name, and it's not him, then you could just give him an ultimatum .... play nice or we'll lock you out. If the router is in a common area, then whoever the account holder is probably ought to change the default router password first. You'll then probably end up splitting the bill 4 ways instead of 5 though.

And, do you want to take thatr tone with someone you share a house with? It might make for unpleasant times.

Oh, and if the account holder does exclude him, point out to him that if he decides to be a smarta...alec, and use the router hardware reset to gain access, it'll be :-

1) Theft, using internet services he's not entitled to
2) Possibly an offence under the Computer Misuse Act too.

Assuming it's not his account, and not a service your landlord provides, then really, if you can't convince him to be reasonable (and not everyone will be), then you've got to decide between you how hard you want to push this, and how nasty you're prepared to let it get.

All IMHO, of course.

[sammorris]

Not many retail routers seem to have QoS like that. We (or rather, I) bought a WRT54GL from Linksys for about £40, and we installed Tomato firmware on it. This allows certain IPs or MACs (more difficult to get round) to be blocked either with on/off or at certain times of the day. Notably, this only blocks internet access, not local network traffic, which makes it even more handy.

What you can also do in this instance is try and find the speed at which downloads have no impact on pings, so he can still download, but slower. For both my student house connection (Be Unlimited @ 4.2Mbps) and home (UK Online @ 5.5Mbps), this seems to be about 35% of maximum, 150KB/s with Be, and 200KB/s with UKOnline. Notably, this is for FTP downloads, not for Bit-Torrent, which is more harmful to pings.

[TAKTAK]

You could lock the router down to specific MAC addresses...

i.e. the MAC addresses of the items that you wish to use with it...

[scaryjim]

I don't think there's an easy solution to this, I'm afraid. If you have got the kind of QOS settings shaithis was referring to available, that would be ideal. Otherwise you're probably going to have to find some way to deny one of his computers access to the wireless network - probably by MAC filtering.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If he continues ignoring you all just change the router and wireless passwords and don't give them to him it. Easiest way forward. Remember the account holder is liable for any non legal downloads he is making using Bittorrent.

[Powderhound]

Yeah, why not ask him what he's downloading that's so important?

[Andeh13]

The account is in his name, but we all chip in for it. There is the risk that this could get nasty but all 4 of us (5 person house in him) are getting fed up of it now, we have put up with it since we moved in (september) and have been playing nice ever since then. He downloads everything really, spooks, films, games etc nothing drastically important its just the fact he downloads constantly. This is purely torrents btw.

Iv asked him to limit downloading to one PC and iv asked him to download all night (midnight - midday) and then turn them off during the day, both times he said he would, then didnt.

The sky router doesnt have QOS afaik, is there anyway to block his MAC address in particular through the router? Rather then enabling only certain ones?

This is not only gaming that is affected, its the entire internet. The wireless becomes more or less unusable when he is downloading, one of the lad has problems with skype dropping him randomly and we all experience very very slow (256k speeds) web browsing in general.

[sammorris]

One thing you have to be careful of is that while you guys pay the bills together, because the account is in his name, he owns the router, so blocking him off completely might not end well.
What you should do is force him to use the bandwidth scheduler for his torrents (different maximum download speed depending on the time of day) and if he doesn't co-operate, get another new phone line is installed, preferably mostly at his expense, and have the second number on a different ISP the rest of you guys use, and pay between each other for it, leaving him to pay for his own connection.
QoS is the method by which you block a particular address, rather than only allowing certain ones. Most retail routers do not have this feature. IIRC the Sky routers are often Netgears, but I can't remember if they have anything like that. The WRT54GL we bought didn't have anything useful until we flashed it.

The reason your net is crap is because Torrents are very connection aggressive. Every person he connects to (downloading multiple things at once, 200+ people is not uncommon) is a connection on the router, and every page you open, or person you speak to in skype is only one or two each. Consequently you guys might get 10/210 connections, and therefore, only 5% of your available bandwidth, which would indeed work out at 256kbps. This isn't exactly how this works, as some peers seed better than others, but high speed torrents are very bad for both connection speed and connection stability as they place a tremendous load on the CPU and RAM of the router.
FTP, HTTP and VOIP on the other hand are much less intensive as it's straight data transmission, not dozens of IP resolves, handshakes and so on.

[Andeh13]

More or less what i expected, the router isnt capable of what im after (QoS by the sound of it), and it gets far too complicated to do it any other way. The one blessing is if he really wants to kick up a fuss (him owning router etc) is that he doesnt have a leg to stand on, mainly due to the nature of what he downloads & the legality side of it. It wouldnt ever get that far though. I will give him a final ultimatum all the same, and if he still fails to abide by it, ill just have to keep changing the password to connect to the wireless & then rebooting the router, then let him decide between downloading sensibly, or forgoing the use of his laptop online.

Just to clarify, this isnt me being a hard ass towards him, a few of the others in the house download aswell but we manage to do it when the rest of the house arnt using the internet/are in lectures. We have tried to offer him a middle ground repeatedly, but after 9 months enough is enough! We all pay for the service so we all deserve an equal right to it imo.


Thanks for the help though guys

[sammorris]

No problem, good luck

[Saracen]

I think you're on a hiding to nothing changing router passwords etc on HIS router. Were it me, I simply wouldn't go that way.

However, I would tell him that there's no point me paying for a net connection if I can't get reasonable and fair use from it. Therefore, either he stops doing what he's doing, or I make alternative internet arrangements (like maybe the other four of you get a shared connection between you) and he can then do whatever he likes on his exclusive connection, but he can pay for it exclusively too. Were it me, I'd either want a usable service, or not be paying for something that was of little use to me. He can't have it both ways.

[GoNz0]

everyone give him 50p come bill day and say your paying for what you get

[Powderhound]

I think you're on a hiding to nothing changing router passwords etc on HIS router. Were it me, I simply wouldn't go that way.

However, I would tell him that there's no point me paying for a net connection if I can't get reasonable and fair use from it. Therefore, either he stops doing what he's doing, or I make alternative internet arrangements (like maybe the other four of you get a shared connection between you) and he can then do whatever he likes on his exclusive connection, but he can pay for it exclusively too. Were it me, I'd either want a usable service, or not be paying for something that was of little use to me. He can't have it both ways.

I suppose you do have the issue that the house can only have one connection.