Member Avatar for Nathanael

Hey guys,

Please forgive me if this is a really stupid question, I've spent the last few days trying to figure out how to do this but not being at all knoledgeable in networking doesn't help, so i thought maybe I could get some help here.

In short, I have 2 house mates who keep running a torrent file sharing on their computer, eating all the bandwith and stopping myself or anybody else from being able to connect, even to the google home page!

As they seem to be adament on not capping the bandwith usage themselves, I am looking for a way to cap their supply.

My basic plan was to set up my PC with an aditional network card, to allow me to control bandwith to other PCs by MAC address, this seems like a fairly simple thing to do from a software side of things, but I can't figure out how to set up the connections.

At the moment, the set up is as follows:


Broadband modem >connected to >>> wireless / 4 port hub >>> connected to other PCs and laptops in the house.

I would like to change this to the following:

Broadband modem >> connected to >> my PC (runnin XP SP2) >> Connected to hub to allow other users connection.

The problem is I don't want to tel them I am doing this, and they run Macs, so I need a way to plug straight into the hub from my PC without then having to set anything up on other machines.

I have a spare 10/100 ethernet PCI card to allow me the second connection.

Is there any way to do this???

If not, I also have a second PC which is currently redundant, so I could potentially set this up with server / linux / windows software if it was needed, then connect my pc to the hub instead.

Sorry if this makes no sense or if I come accross stupid, I am a geek I just don't know anything about networks!!!

Any help would be appreciated and obviously I'll do my best to answer any questions.

Thanks Guys!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Suspishio
Member Avatar for Suspishio

There is a setting in Network Connections/Advanced that specifies the order in which TCP/IP binds to an adapter.

Since there is only one TCP/IP stack in Windows XP, you can't use two adapters at the same time. So your project seems thwarted to me.

Your Linux suggestion might work; but check that Linux (like Unix) can independently trunk TCP/IP data to a given NIC.

You should/might be able to set QOS in your router, though and award yourself a greater share of the bandwidth.

Hope that helps.

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