Throttle Application bandwidth by Process, not by port or host

October 31, 2013 8:08 PM

I'm using Bitcasa to back up things, but it doesn't have builtin bandwidth upload throttling. So consequently it sucks up all the bandwidth and the entire houses network comes to a stop. This also happens to make browsing the web impossible. This would be easy to do if Bitcasa used a nonstandard port, but it uses 433 to upload to Amazon's EC. I have other applications that also need full bandwidth to EC (intermittently), so throttling those domains won't work either. What I really need is an application specific throttling App . Help? (OS X ML).
posted by Brent Parker to Technology (7 answers total)

I've not used it myself, but I think that Throttled might do what you want.

It's geared towards optimizing online games but should do what you want as well, at least on casual inspection. There's both a GUI and CLI version (you probably want the former) and it's open source.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:17 PM on October 31, 2013

Response by poster: Throttled is just a front end for ipfw. ipfw allows shaping based on port and host, not by application. =/

In case anyone is looking for ipfw/PF frontends, there are a few others to look at as well icefloor for PF and waterroof for ipfw. But both of these, again, don't allow shaping based on application - which is the criteria I'm trying to meet.
posted by Brent Parker at 9:28 PM on October 31, 2013

You can also throttle based on soure IP, can't you? Can You add a second IP on a virtual interface and force Bitcassa to bind to that iP somehow?

Alternatively, do you have to solve this on your computer, rather than the router? OpenWRT Attitude Adjustment does a pretty good job with upstream QoS with no configuration beyond checking and then setting your actual upstream bandwidth. Since I started using it I've stopped throttling long uploads, like my offsite backup, because it doesn't get in the way any more. I can fill the upstream pipe and yet pings still maintain the same latency as an unloaded connection
posted by Good Brain at 1:38 AM on November 1, 2013

Actually, perhaps simpler than setting up a secondary IP, use lsof to figure out what port bitcassa is using for the source-port when talking to amazon, then match on that source-port.
posted by Good Brain at 1:46 AM on November 1, 2013

Can you edit QoS settings in your router? If so, limit connections to EC to a specific percentage of your bandwidth (say 5 to 75%, for example). This should still give it the option of grabbing a lot of outgoing bandwidth without allowing it to use everything.
posted by caution live frogs at 7:50 AM on November 2, 2013

Response by poster: Good Brain - Which router are you using? I'd like to take the Attitude Adjustment route (it would probably solve other problems), but I'm not sure which I should get (and could also sit behind a UVerse modem).
posted by Brent Parker at 7:35 AM on November 6, 2013

I'm running OpenWRT on two Netgear routers, a WNDR3700 & WNDR3800, which are basically the same hardware. It works very well.

Unfortunately, I think the 3800 is discontinued and the 3700 has had a major hardware revision so it effectively a different router from what I have.

I'd suggest checking out the list of supported hardware. I think there are some TP-Link routers that people find to be a good deal. Pay close attention to hardware versions though.
posted by Good Brain at 8:07 PM on November 6, 2013