Throttling / Blocking Ports on a WAP?
 

Hi All,

As a sideline, I help manage a small network at a rural seaside resort on Vancouver Island - 19 waterfront cottages. In the summer the cottages are rented weekly by people on vacation, in the winter they're rented monthly by locals.

Nearly two years ago I put a wireless access point up a pole at the resort in the winter so the guests could get WiFi. It doesn't blanket the whole resort, but it's adequate and has hummed away for nearly 2 years now.

However, what I feared would happen appears to have happened - The resort has received a message from their ISP telling them they're exceeding their allowed usage plan.

What I suspect is happening is the winter tenants are downloading (maybe torrenting) tons of music and videos to get them through the cold winter nights. The service isn't meant for that, it's meant for email and light web surfing. If they want anything serious they're expected to bring their own internet service into the cottage.

The network works like this:

- Broadband comes in via ADSL
- ADSL modem plugged into (non-wireless) router
- Resort PCs (2) plugged into (non-wireless) router via CAT5
- Non-wireless router provides DHCP service to clients on the LAN (including wireless clients)
- Wireless Access Point (WAP) on pole is plugged into (non-wireless) router via long piece of CAT5
- DHCP is turned off on the WAP. WAP merely acts as a "Wireless Hub"
- WAP is running DD-WRT firmware. I'm not sure which version - It would have been whatever was current about 2 years ago...?
- I don't remember the exact model of WAP but it's a Linksys, in the WRT54G "family"

What I'd like to do is somehow figure out a way to get our bandwidth down, either by throttling the bandwidth to the WAP, or blocking some ports putting some gadget between the WAP and the hub or ??? I'd prefer to not impact the resort's internet connectivity, just what's up the pole.

I'm looking for suggestions. The people at the resort aren't very technically savvy, so it's got to be something I can 'configure and forget.'

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Geoff in Vancouver, Canada

DD-WRT can block ports and I believe it can bandwidth shape.

Like Cluebyfour said; DD-WRT, even in an old version, should be able to do everything you want; log into the WAP and go to the "access restrictions" tab. In that, you can tell it to block all P2P traffic. Then, in the QoS tab, setup a bandwidth limiter on all traffic.

You may also want to check some log files to see just who is doing what, because if they are downloading nasty stuff, you'd be responsible for proving it was not YOU who did it.