Limiting Network Traffic. HELP!!!

[BTpain]

okay, i have a problem. When i host a lan party, everyone in the lan connects through my gateway to the internet. Now some people don't understand that i don't have unlimited bandwidth and they use it up all the time. What I want to do is limit network traffic to certain IPs/network cards. Is there a program to do that with or what do i have to do.
P.S. I am running winxp on the gateway

 

[DVAmon]

When you say LAN Party, do you mean literally, like having people come over to your place and setup for some gaming over the internet?

Or do you mean you're hosting a game and people join in over the net?

I'm not sure I understand the question so we'll field it both ways:

If you have local users on your network, and you want to limit them from using bandwidth, look in your manual or your router's setup for firewall rules, or something similar to Enable the rule by DNS name, IP Range, and then set a protocol and port range to allow or deny the traffic, based on time or completely. I.E. You don't want John at 192.168.0.5 to play UT2004 from 9 AM to 5 PM, since he should be working, so you'd setup UT Filter, JOHNSPC, IP Range 192.168.0.5 to 192.168.0.5 Protocol TCP Port range 1025-65535 deny 9AM 5PM or 0900 to 1700. Even though UT '04 uses port 7777 by default, this will prevent it from trying additional ports out. Of course, it wouldn't prevent him from playing single player, so maybe that's a bad example, ;-)

The gist of it, is knowing what programs, protocols, ports and IP ranges, and times you want to limit or deny access to the internet.

If that's not the case:

If you have people connecting to your machine or dedicated server, as if you were hosting a game, and they are sucking up b/w, then just password protect your game or don't advertise it, give your friends your WAN IP personally, and they should be able to connect to your game no problem.

Hope this helps
-DVA