Capping Bandwidth for angry dummies

January 7, 2012 7:27 PM

How does DD WRT pro/paid version control bandwidth?

We have been trying to get DD WRT onto our new Buffalo router (WZR-HP-G300NH2) and then onto Gargoyle to use its excellent bandwidth capping by total GB per week/month to prevent the teenager in the basement from blowing our GB limit and getting overage charges.

We have used Gargoyle before, but there isn't a version for the G300NH2 (we actually ordered the G300NH but this is what arrived - we're PISSED!). The one we have has an Atheros chip set which means the officially approved Gargoyle versions for the Buffalo are reported to break the router; or, at least, we can't find one that is deemed compatible. Also due to this chip, options like Tomato etc won't work (Broadcom chips only).

We've already bricked the thing and recovered it all day trying to get something up and running and are tearing our hair out.

We THINK that DD WRT professional allows full bandwidth quotas. The free DD WRT seems to only do throttling of bandwidth and this doesn't interest us. We want to set, for example, a weekly limit of 4Gb for a series of MAC addresses/ip's that cuts off access after that point. We can't find ANY information about the paid DD WRT beyond vague statements like "advanced bandwidth management" over the free version.

So, questions:

1: Does the fuller version of DD WRT (paid) allows us to cap bandwidth by volume, rather than by speed?

2: Alternatively, is there any firmware that will work on this router that will ape Gargoyle's quota management style for the Atheros chipset in a Buffalo router that we could try? Or is there some hidden Gargoyle version that is even likely to work?

Any ideas?

posted by Brockles to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I can't actually speak to the abilities of dd-wrt pro, but I'd bet it's more advanced QoS features in the pro version (e.g., prioritize real-time traffic like skype over torrents or whatnot).

In general there aren't many real-world scenarios where you want to just stop routing traffic altogether when a hard cap is reached, so there's probably not a lot of clamor for an implementation. You could use the traffic shaping tools in dd-wrt to adjust the QoS parameters to make it mathematically impossible for your teenager to exceed the quota, but that's probably too much of a PITA. If you're techie enough you might be able to automate such an adjustment process.
posted by axiom at 8:24 PM on January 7, 2012

Depending on your skill level (sounds decent enough), use OpenWRT (note the Note), which includes traffic shaping.
posted by rhizome at 8:28 PM on January 7, 2012

Although I've never used it, there's a quota module for iptables that should do what you want. If it's included in your DD-WRT installation you should be able to add a custom firewall rule to implement the quota and reset it using cron. Otherwise you can check bandwidth every few minutes using cron and use that to trigger a rule to block everything. Either approach will involve telneting into the router and doing some work on the command line.
I can walk you through some of this; if DD-WRT pro comes with phone support they should be able to as well.
Have you considered RMAing your router? You're entitled to get the one you ordered.
posted by marakesh at 3:06 PM on January 8, 2012