Limiting my own network throughput

[Scott J. Henson]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-07-13 at 10:23 -0400, Scott J. Henson wrote:
>> Alan McKinnon wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Here at work we have a fairly fat network pipe, shared amongst 100+
>>> people. The local BOFH would prefer it if I didn't max out the pipe with
>>> daily updates :-) He's a friend and doesn't want micro-manage the
>>> network so he trusts me to do the right thing  .
>>>
>>> I can live with updates coming through at 2kB/sec or thereabouts and
>>> mail/web coming through at full speed. What would be the easiest way to
>>> implement this kind of network throttling where it's still under my
>>> control?
>>>
>>> alan
>>>
>>>
>> I think what you want is qos queuing.  I prefer shorewall to 
>> manage my firewalling rules.  As such I would recommend 
>> looking at the following webpage.
>> http://www.shorewall.net/traffic_shaping.htm
> 
> I was hoping to not have to go there :-)

Or you could go here:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-20342.html

That purports to work, though I prefer the shorewall method 
personally.

> 
>> I would think you would want to limit bandwidth to the 
>> mirror you use.  Or you could limit what apt can use, though 
>> using the dest would be easier.
> 
> The easiest would be to limit any package manager app, and be able to
> switch it on or off. At home I want full bandwidth usage, and throttled
> at work. I'd then default to on or off in the respective profiles.
> 
> What does apt* use to do it's downloading? 'ps axf' tells me
> it's /usr/lib/apt/methods/*, so if I were to shape based on those
> binaries, would I catch everything used by Ubuntu?
> 

Yes, you should only have to shape on the http method if 
thats what your using to do the downloading. aka all your 
deb lines have http as the protocol.

> 
>> Alternatively, if there are a lot of people using Ubuntu on 
>> your network, you could have a local mirror you sync down to 
>> and update against it.
> 
> Nope, sadly it's just me and one of the business unit managers at this
> point :-(

That is unfortunate.  But now you have additional incentive 
to convert some more people to the dark side of the force. ;-)

-- 
Scott Henson
LCSEE Systems Staff
WVU MAE Undergraduate
Ubuntu User