How to limit internet speed on router TL-WR841N

[ATamsoje]

I have 4MB internet, so max download speed is 480kb/s. On the LAN is sister computer, mom computer on wifi.
Sister constantly downloading video/music, im getting really bad internet quality, multiplayer gaming nearly impossible.
What should I modify on 192.168.1.1 to make sister pc max download speed 50kbs, while my and mom pc internet speed kept 480kb/s ?

 

[Robert Pankiw]

Hey, I don't really want to go through the whole document, but TL-WR841N user manual is right there.

Page 72, section 4.13 talks specifically about limiting bandwidth.

I strongly urge you to speak with your mother and sister about the issues you are having. It's not fair to give her <10% of the available capacity when there are only 3 people using the system.

Please note, it took me only seconds to use Google to find that manual, then about a minute to find page 72. I simply searched "limit", none matched what I wanted, so I searched "bandwidth" and it was the second option.

I don't mind answer any questions you have, but I've never used that router before.


Edit: You used a lowercase 'b' when referring to your transfer rate. I assume you meant to use an uppercase 'B'. The values are very different.

 

[bill001g]

It depends which firmware the router is running. Some of the tplink models have a advanced QoS I am unsure if yours does check the very latest firmware. If you can't do it on the stock firmware I am sure there is a dd-wrt firmware image that will run on your router and dd-wrt has advanced qos.

The main feature you are looking for is the ability to limit DOWNLOAD rates to a fixed rate. This is not a common feature. What you do is put in a rule that matches her IP to a group. Then limit that group to the rate you want...it is in kbits though so be careful. This will prevent that ip from using more bandwidth leaving the rest for the other machines.

You would think should never work since all you are doing it discarding traffic after you have already received it and it has used up your internet connection. That is mostly true...to really do the ISP would have to do it. What makes it work on most application is they detect the packet loss and will slow down trying to prevent it. It does not work on all applications as well...bit torrent tends to be very stubborn about slowing down. Youtube,netflix etc responds very well those in fact will recognize it at the application level and change the video resolution.

 

[ATamsoje]

It depends which firmware the router is running. Some of the tplink models have a advanced QoS I am unsure if yours does check the very latest firmware. If you can't do it on the stock firmware I am sure there is a dd-wrt firmware image that will run on your router and dd-wrt has advanced qos.

The main feature you are looking for is the ability to limit DOWNLOAD rates to a fixed rate. This is not a common feature. What you do is put in a rule that matches her IP to a group. Then limit that group to the rate you want...it is in kbits though so be careful. This will prevent that ip from using more bandwidth leaving the rest for the other machines.

You would think should never work since all you are doing it discarding traffic after you have already received it and it has used up your internet connection. That is mostly true...to really do the ISP would have to do it. What makes it work on most application is they detect the packet loss and will slow down trying to prevent it. It does not work on all applications as well...bit torrent tends to be very stubborn about slowing down. Youtube,netflix etc responds very well those in fact will recognize it at the application level and change the video resolution.

Firmware version: 3.9.7 Build 090821 Rel.58159n
Hardware version: WR841N v5 00000000

 

[pm4]

If you got 4MB you got 32Mb which would be plenty, but I guess you meant 4Mb/s meaning 4096 kb/s as max speed.
If you are getting just 480kb/s issue may be elsewhere too as that is just small portion of what you should have.

Also one more thing, most online games use very little bandwidth as low as 50-100kb/s or even lower. What is more important is latency. Ofc if is all bandwidth used it will bottleneck you, but to keep stable online play you don't need lot of bandwidth.

So if you run to this rather than limiting your sister you should try to reserve part of bandwidth to you. TP-Links should have ability to set both min and max bandwidth. Btw you need both upload and download speed. This way it should not limit your sister but also you should have smoother play. Ofc don't know how good is TP link at enforcing these limits, but you can try.

 

[bill001g]

If you got 4MB you got 32Mb which would be plenty, but I guess you meant 4Mb/s meaning 4096 kb/s as max speed.
If you are getting just 480kb/s issue may be elsewhere too as that is just small portion of what you should have.

Also one more thing, most online games use very little bandwidth as low as 50-100kb/s or even lower. What is more important is latency. Ofc if is all bandwidth used it will bottleneck you, but to keep stable online play you don't need lot of bandwidth.

So if you run to this rather than limiting your sister you should try to reserve part of bandwidth to you. TP-Links should have ability to set both min and max bandwidth. Btw you need both upload and download speed. This way it should not limit your sister but also you should have smoother play. Ofc don't know how good is TP link at enforcing these limits, but you can try.

His design is correct...you MUST limit the other users there is no way to "reserve" bandwidth for a user. You can only control UPLOAD data. You can of course control which data is send very easily. The main problem is the DOWNLOAD data. Say a user tells the server "give me a HD video" and the server starts sending 4mbit/sec of data totally saturating the link. Limiting the sending does very little good. It sent a tiny amount of data to get it started and only sends a tiny amount to keep it running.

So if you run your game at the same time you have 4mbit of video data and 400kbit of game data. This ISP could care less about what the data is you are 10% above and it will randomly drop 10% of the data.

Now your router gets what is left. What is it going to do magically recreate the lost gaming data.

The only way to make this work is to try to cause enough errors on the "bad" users so they in effect give up and use less.

There really is no actually way to limit the traffic the ISP is in full control.

 

[ATamsoje]

If you got 4MB you got 32Mb which would be plenty, but I guess you meant 4Mb/s meaning 4096 kb/s as max speed.
If you are getting just 480kb/s issue may be elsewhere too as that is just small portion of what you should have.

Also one more thing, most online games use very little bandwidth as low as 50-100kb/s or even lower. What is more important is latency. Ofc if is all bandwidth used it will bottleneck you, but to keep stable online play you don't need lot of bandwidth.

So if you run to this rather than limiting your sister you should try to reserve part of bandwidth to you. TP-Links should have ability to set both min and max bandwidth. Btw you need both upload and download speed. This way it should not limit your sister but also you should have smoother play. Ofc don't know how good is TP link at enforcing these limits, but you can try.

His design is correct...you MUST limit the other users there is no way to "reserve" bandwidth for a user. You can only control UPLOAD data. You can of course control which data is send very easily. The main problem is the DOWNLOAD data. Say a user tells the server "give me a HD video" and the server starts sending 4mbit/sec of data totally saturating the link. Limiting the sending does very little good. It sent a tiny amount of data to get it started and only sends a tiny amount to keep it running.

So if you run your game at the same time you have 4mbit of video data and 400kbit of game data. This ISP could care less about what the data is you are 10% above and it will randomly drop 10% of the data.

Now your router gets what is left. What is it going to do magically recreate the lost gaming data.

The only way to make this work is to try to cause enough errors on the "bad" users so they in effect give up and use less.

There really is no actually way to limit the traffic the ISP is in full control.

I have overcomed this. I banned 'bad' user from the LAN. So 'bad' user uses wifi now. And in wireless settings i have set up max 1Mb Tx rate.