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Idea #18378: It is hard to manage the bandwidth of applications

bug This idea is a duplicate of Idea #6820: Implement traffic shaping.
Written by SoftwareExplorer the 2 Mar 09 at 01:17. Category: Internet & Networking. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Rationale
When you have lots of programs open, it can be hard to tell which one is hogging all your bandwidth, and even and even if you could, you can't do anything to stop, say for example, a virtual machine from using so much that Firefox won't load internet pages There are tools like nethogs, but they are command line. And then of course, when the user can see what is using all the bandwidth, they will want to be able to limit the speed of specific applications.

105
votes
closed
Solution #1: Make GUI program to moniter and/or limit bandwidth of applications
Written by SoftwareExplorer the 2 Mar 09 at 01:17.
I think that there should be a Gui program to monitor and/or limit the bandwidth of applications, user defined groups of applications, or the whole computer.
149
votes
closed
Solution #2: combine Solution #1 with the system monitor
Written by wouter215 the 2 Mar 09 at 18:20.
integrate Solution #1 with the system monitor under the processes tab.
example: when I right click on the number of the process(eg. Firefox), on the (new)bandwidth column and set it's max/min download/upload limit(unlimited by default)
111
votes
closed
Solution #3: Use Solution #1 + #2 to make a separate bandwidth tab in the system monitor
Written by SoftwareExplorer the 3 Mar 09 at 02:36.
Not many applications use the internet in comparison to the processes listed under the processes tab, and it is already rather used up as far as column space goes. So my proposal is to make a separte bandwidth tab that let you limit the bandwidth of application, groups of applications and/or the whole system (an all encompassing application group). It should let you set the upload and download bandwidth separately and it could show the list of application like nautilus does when you set it to list view with the clickable arrows to expand and collapse groups.

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Comments
jsereno wrote on the 2 Mar 09 at 20:42
It's difficult to determine if an application is genuinely "hogging" bandwidth, for example unless Firefox is downloading large files, web sites in general only make a up a handful of megabytes of bandwidth usage per page.

If you really want to manage your bandwidth properly then you need a proper router. Get yourself a spare old PC with 64MB or 128MB RAM (an old Pentium II or III will suffice), get two network cards for it and install Smoothwall or pfSense on it to replace your off-the-shelf consumer router. You will suddenly see your supposedly poor broadband bandwidth suddenly rocket in speed because these packages are purpose-built for routing and can manage your bandiwidth far more efficiently. All software routers can employ Quality-of-Service (QoS) to ensure certain traffic is prioritised over others, for example, you can happily madly BitTorrent all you want 24/7, but the system will never allow BT to flood your connection, meaning that things like VoIP calls come through with complete clarity! And despite this control, you will find that BT downloads come down much faster too because a Smoothwall/pfSense router can better handle all the translations required.

sillyxone wrote on the 4 Mar 09 at 16:37
as a temporary solution for monitoring bandwidth per process, nethogs may help.

Maybe whatever the new tool is, can start with nethogs project

Endolith wrote on the 30 Mar 09 at 18:03
Here you go: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=559784


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