[Web4lib] Limiting bandwidth

[Francis Kayiwa]

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On Oct 12, 2006, at 10:51 AM, Judy McBrian wrote:

> Please excuse the cross posting.
>
> For some of you this is a dumb question, but if you don't ask  
> you're never gonna learn nuthin'
>
> I want to create an inexpensive wi-fi for patrons.   The big word  
> with the Board is inexpensive.  My concern is laptop patrons using  
> out bandwidth for things like gaming and downloading music files.   
> That is, by numbers and activities sucking the life out of our T1
> It's bad enough in the summer with every kid on every computer  
> playing the Runewhatever game.
> (No, we don't, and no, I have NO CONTROL over what the Board  
> decides to allow or not on library owned machines....)
> Does anyone have any wise words?

If this was my problem I would use a proxy/cache server like Squid 
[1]. You probably want to do this regardless. :-) Squid has delay  
pools which you can then fine tune to throttle websites that are  
considered "less important".

Runescape users like to have fast network connections and they would  
simply stop using your bandwidth once they learn that it lacks  
optimal performance.

You can take this a step further if your network admins are bored and  
like to turn knobs, switches etc. :-) They can install a DNS [resolver 
(emphases)]. DJB works at my institution so I must recommend djbdns 
[2] :-) but I am sure the venerable BIND can do something similar.

A DNS resolver works like this. Say a "good user" wants to go to  
www.uic.edu/depts/lib (we like that here) so the resolver doesn't  
care and it says righto you can pass.

A different user just want to get to somerune.server.net. A DNS  
server (the authoritative kind) would send this user to  
somerune.server.net, BUT since this is YOUR network you can set up a  
resolver that lies to the computer. Instead of sending them to  
somerune.server.net they can be sent to 1.1.1.1 or if you are a kind  
net admin, combine my two solutions and send them to the  
squid.proxy.net server which throttles their access to the lowest  
priority. This way you don't have irritated users just mildly  
inconvenienced ones.

Your server logs will have to be monitored in the event that  
somerune.server.net becomes newrune.server.net but those are the  
breaks. :-)

regards,

Francis

[1] http://www.squid-cache.org/
[2] http://cr.yp.to/djbdns.html



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