Bandwidth Limiting

[jbseven]

I have a motherboard with dual LAN. I want to share my pc's internet connection (coming from LAN1) through a router connected on LAN2. Thing is I also want to limit the bandwidth of the internet provided to LAN2. How would i best achieve this?

 

[eibgrad]

I assume you're supporting this configuration using a simple Windows bridge in Network Connections. Problem is, that creates a single, logical network that's hard to control without affecting your own network limits. And while they do make apps for throttling network bandwidth, they typically do so based on a "per process" basis (e.g. NetBalancer, NetLimiter).

One solution might be to employ a software router, say WinGate. The free version supports up to three (3) concurrent users (not just three seats). Unfortunately, those users are now double NAT’d behind two firewalls, and so it complicates remote access. But perhaps it’s not an issue in your case. Frankly, even licensing is not really an issue since the only client is the hardware router on LAN2. The only reason you’re using WinGate is to bridge those two network connections and still be able to throttle that process w/ the free versions of NetBalancer or NetLimiter.

NOTE: I had considered throttling ICS, but that might prove difficult since the ICS process appears integrated into the Windows firewall service. IOW, it doesn’t run as a wholly independent app/service. And unlike WinGate, ICS doesn’t have any such throttling capabilities itself.

Of course, I suppose you could eliminate the hardware router on LAN2 completely in favor of WinGate if you can live w/ the three concurrent user limit. You might even want to consider WinGate Pro (although probably cost prohibitive for small needs). This eliminates the need for NetBalancer/NetLimiter so that rather than a flat, hard limit, you could throttle based on protocol, time of day, MAC address, etc.

 

[jbseven]

So I installed Wingate free and had a look around. I'm afraid its beyond my abilities getting it to work as an alternative to ICS which is what Im considering at this point.

I was hoping to use internet connection sharing and then use traffic shaper on LAN2 which would have been pretty straightforward.

Unfortunately configuring the router to work with ics is proving to be a pain in itself. Can someone tell me what Im doing wrong?

LAN1 is static at 192.168.2.20
LAN2 is static at 192.168.137.1 set by ICS
Router2 is set to automatically receive ip from dhcp, local ip 192.168.137.2, dhcp server on for wireless clients and connected to LAN2 via the 'internet' port on the router.

 

[eibgrad]

Your ICS setup doesn't sound right. Normally you leave LAN2 set to DHCP. Then when ICS starts, it will automatically use the 192.168.0.x network and startup a DHCP server. It will assign 192.168.0.1 to your side of the LAN2 connection, and 192.168.0.2-254 to clients on the other end of LAN2. If that other end is the WAN of your second router, then the router will mostly receive 192.168.0.2.

That’s all there is to it. Most ppl screw it up when they attempt to preconfigure it, try to specify some IP they prefer, etc. It's best to set LAN2 to DHCP, enable ICS, and let it do all the work.