New neighbor screwing up my connection

M

Masterphool

Gawd
Joined
Sep 26, 2000
Messages
570
I setup a Linksys WRT300N to share the internet connection between me, the landlord downstairs and the next door neighbor.

The old neighbor didn't use the web that much and we never had any problems. Now the new neighbor has a teenager who most certainly is running a fileserver or downloading massive amounts of porn via torrents. How can I find out aside from the fact that my connection now lags consistently? I get disconnected from my online game now to a point where if they're home I can't play.

I can administer the router and can see he,s connected (I even know his MAC adress). Obviously I can deny him access but I'd rather not because then they come complaining to me that the intaweb is broke.

ideally I'd like to restrict their bandwidth to 33% of the router's capacity. I considered using Qos to deny access for certain apps, but he uses a MAC so I have no idea which ones to cut. I don,t even know which torrent client he uses.

Help me [H]
 
How does the idea of setting up an older computer (at least a PII) as a router sound? Ive been using Pfsense for awhile, and it has some addon packages called PeruserBW, or per user bandwidth throttling. It also has a package that graphs network usage by IP/subnet, and breaks it down as http traffic, torrent traffic, vpn traffic etc.

Running a whole seperate computer, especially when you probably paid good money for that linksys might not sound appealing... although it is a fairly easy solution assuming you have a PII box, 128MB of ram, a hard drive of some kind, and two NICs to put in it.

Though if the neighbor is torrenting, it might not be a bad idea to have some more fancier logging than what the linksys provides, just incase you are sent a few cookie-cutter legal letters concerning the torrented data.
 
Why don't you just tell the neighbor's kid that if he keeps on downloading, you'll cut off the service?
 
Take an P3-800MHz + 256MB RAM + 10GB HDD + 2x NICs and throw Endian on it. I have been using it for a while now and I think it would fit your needs exactly. It's a hardware firewall and Unified Threat Management thingy with A/V and IDS/IPS. You can setup a transparent web proxy in a few clicks which will cache web pages locally, saving you some intarweb downloading, and the best part is the content filter. You can set it up to block p2p filesharing and torrents I believe. Another thing you could do is setup QoS to only allow him xx% of the in/out bandwidth. Since you know his MAC address you could set him up with a reserved IP address from the DHCP pool and then set the QoS on that IP. You could also really piss him off by blocking IM and pr0n through the content filter. :)

Seriously, though, I think this would be your best bet. I have been running it for a while to protect my kids from junk. I just finished setting one up for a buddy of mine with teenagers and my boss who has kids in the house.

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another vote for *nix based router, my distro of choice is smoothwall though, you could monitor all his connections and bandwidth use and setup qos to limit his speed.
 
Sounds like you're going through a lot of work to keep a freeloading neighbor happy, who will probably take every inch of something "free" that they can get.

I'd give them the phone number of your ISP so they can call and get their own account, my online gaming performance is important to me...especially when I'm paying for my own service. And WPA it up with your landlord, who doesn't crush your performance (good to keep a landlord happy too). Granted you can limit much of the impact your next door P2P freeloader will have on you with various QoS routers 'n *nix distros...but never eliminate all of it, you'll still be suffering from some performance hit.
 
pfsense, dedicate like 100k to the wireless and the rest to the wired! :D
 
Thanks for the advice. It's a lot of work (and expense since I just donated my old comp to my sister) to install a proxy.

I'll start by finding port ranges for most torrent clients and IM clients and QoS them to low priority and up my game's ports to high priority. It won't fix my slow ass normal web-browsing, but at least it'll allow me to use the web for gaming without getting dropped avary 5 minutes because of lag.

If this fails, I will attempt to get the amount downloaded from the ISP to demonstrate their disproportionate use of our bandwidth and discontinue their shared service if they don't change their habits.

I know the landlord included the internet in their lease. I want to keep this arrangement because I get free cable TV from the landlord and we split Internet 3-ways. I wouldn't mind going back to 2-ways with the landlord but if he wrote internet is provided in their lease he'll never go for the "disconnect them" option.

If I can't get anyone to compromise, I'll use the proxy with pfsense and bite the bullet, and set it up to limit their bandwidth.

Can I instruct pfsense to deny internet access after they've used up X amount of bandwidth during the month?

It pisses me off somewhat that I have to go through all this trouble (and possibly expense) just because the fucking neighbor is too classless to consider others around him and use the web responsibly.

Admittedly I've used *some* torrented content, but I usually schedule it to run during the night and I don't download more than 1GB a month mostly because I know that the landlord would have a cow if I constantly slowed his connection.

Thanks for providing some good advice [H] :D
 
Masterphool said:
I know the landlord included the internet in their lease. I want to keep this arrangement because I get free cable TV from the landlord and we split Internet 3-ways. I wouldn't mind going back to 2-ways with the landlord but if he wrote internet is provided in their lease he'll never go for the "disconnect them" option.
Click to expand...

Ahh..there's the catch. Looking at what I'd want to do...since online gaming is important to me, you might ponder the option of obtaining your own dedicated internet connection...let the landlord and your greedy neighbor deal with each other.

A lot more expensive?
Well...you're already looking at getting another PC...to build a pfsense box with. Even if you come across an old p2 or something for free...
*the sucker will consume monthly electricity (probably over 10 bucks per month since it will run 24x7). How much is a DSL connection these days? 20 bucks or less if you get a 1 year package...Hmmm....
*Take up space, more wires, ugly, possibly noisy
*Take up your time to build, learn, configure, manage....to me that is also money
 
if the kid doing torrents or other p2p has half a brain he won't be using standard p2p ports so blocking/QoSing those ports probably won't do you any good. Best/cheapest solution is to talk to the kid and reach some kinda arrangement. If you can't then either get another internet connection just for yourself or setup *nix router.
 
you could always try a packet sniffer like wireshark just to see what data is going in and out when your net is slow
 
1) Find out exactly what he's downloading
2) Pretend to be the ISP
3) Call when kids parents are home and report an unusially high download activity in xxxxx area.
4) Bust out the box of popcorn and sit back and enjoy the show :cool:
5) Enjoy a nice fast connection



Or you can just prioritize the ports using a nix box. Keep in mind, if this kid is doing illegalz, then you are responsible for it... the MPAA, RIAA, Government knows no face when it comes to the owner of the connection.
 
Masterphool said:
I know the landlord included the internet in their lease. I want to keep this arrangement because I get free cable TV from the landlord and we split Internet 3-ways. I wouldn't mind going back to 2-ways with the landlord but if he wrote internet is provided in their lease he'll never go for the "disconnect them" option.
Click to expand...
I'd be willing to bet that this "arrangement" violates the TOS of both the cable tv company and your ISP.

Secondly, your landlord sounds like an idiot. It would be illegal for him to include the services of your ISP (I'm presuming it's in your name) in the lease for another tenant. If he wants to include such amenities in the lease, he would need to make arrangements directly with the providers.

bob said:
Though if the neighbor is torrenting, it might not be a bad idea to have some more fancier logging than what the linksys provides, just incase you are sent a few cookie-cutter legal letters concerning the torrented data.
Click to expand...
Logging won't mean diddly squat if and when (and it's really more a matter of when than if) he gets busted for downloading copyrighted materials. If the account is in his name (not the neighbor kid's), he is legally responsible for all activity on his connection.
 
Ockie said:
Keep in mind, if this kid is doing illegalz, then you are responsible for it... the MPAA, RIAA, Government knows no face when it comes to the owner of the connection.
Click to expand...


One of my friends got nailed on this in Indy, he had a 6meg cable setup and left his wireless open, a few months later he gets a letter in the mail stating pay $4xx,xxx by some date or meet us in court on some other date. I am not sure what hes decided yet but I know he doesn't have the $400k they want. I know he wasn't doing the p2p stuff, hes a computer retard, all he plays is Wow on a dell laptop computer, he didn't even know how to set his wireless up or lock it down.
 
I'd almost say get the landlord involed, tell him whats going on and maybe have some kind of meeting with all three of you sitting down, because who knows whats going on, could be the dad dling kiddie stuff, government shows no face you can say you didn't know but they wont care, id rather pay the dumb record companies before going to jail for that, ruin you for life, i think building another computer to restrict their bandwidth should be the last resort
 
Personaly I would use either a unix/linux box or a better router and just block every non-standard port. Mind you that you could always reopen some ports for yourself. Landlord prob wouldn't notice as web would still work fine but it would srew with a lot of p2p apps.
 
Lol. Entertaining this thread today.

1- I setup the router for WEP (because the landlord's wife's laptop doesn't support WPA).
2- Everything is in the landlord's name, not mine.
3- I am in canada, so RIAA and MPAA can lcik my taint.
4- They wouldn't find any on my computer, nor on any CD's/DVD's in my appartment.
5- Where I live, there are 2 internet services company. 1 I abhorre and the other is cable internet. We are hooked up with the latter. Of course it's against their TOS. That's why I wouldn't want anyone from that company to start snooping around the triplex and get the landlord and myself busted.
6- I will try QoS. If that doesn't work, I will approach the landlord with the problem, and if he doesn't fix it, I will kindly "decline" to share their connection and get the other company's service (which is DLS over phone line).

This new tenant has been nothing but a nightmare. I loved my previous 3 neighbors. None of them smoked! This lady is a cancer-stick chain smoker and her shit was wafting everywhere in my place. I had to take drastic measures to get rid of the smell including sealing up one of the 2 doors that we share common space with each other.

And now this internet shenanigan. God I can't wait until the real-estate market comes to a crushing stop! han I can afford a house and live like I want to without any consideration for other tenants!

Anyway, I'll update tomorrow see if anything positive comes from QoS.
 
100 bucks this guy lives in Edmonton or Calgary.

House prices are sick as hell here.
 
Someone suggested this, but I decided to put it in a nice, line-by-line format:

1) Subscribe for DSL. Yes, I'm NOT kidding--go find cheap DSL for like $14.99 / month or $19.99 / month.
2) Make the wireless router hook up to THAT instead.
3) Use the cable connection for yourself.

Unless you have a written contract that states you will provide CABLE internet to your landlord, you are probably still within the spirit of your verbal contract (which probably stated you'd provide wireless internet access.) The nice side-effect is the DSL will probably be slower than the cable, so the kid might get pissed but the landlord won't notice the difference.

You get your internet connection back, the landlord and the neighbor are effectively shut out of your business and based on the benefits you described (free cable) it sounds like this is the far better solution!

-----

The other solution is to ask how much more it is to plug a second cable modem in via your cable company. They might have a way by which you can use a cable modem for yourself for only $10 or so more a month. Might even be cheaper than that if they don't care how many modems, only IP addresses. You'd use one IP address for the wireless and one IP for you (use 2 cable modems for this.) Solves both problems!

202276
 
I would cancel any contract that you have with your landlord (if possible) and service yourself. You have to pay for your own TV and Internet access but if the cable company ever checks on you, I'm guessing the fines will not be so cheap. Also, to hell with that little shit's hax0rs and war3z crap, limit his connection to 1mbps (33 percent of the router's speed is something like 50mbps, I think). Make sure that you talk to him and his parents on downloading crap. If you want to scare him even further, tell him that you can see everything he does online and will present these findings to his parents if he doesnt throttle down his downloads.
 
Sorry for resurrecting a 5-day old thread, but I wanted to update it.

At first we were having intermittent problems, but since last thursday, we don't have ANY internet service (I'm at the office now).

So I urged the landlord to call the cable company and sure enough, they have a hardware failure on their side of the network, between the distribution point and our modem.

They had said they were coming to fix it last night between 5PM and 8 PM but they called and pushed it back to today.

So I *cough* might have jumped the gum in assuming the kid was sucking all the life out of our connection. Once service is back, I'll make sure and check for problems, and if I do have any doubts, I'll get DSL and stop fucking around with splitting a wireless connection.

Thanks for helping everyone, much appreciated.
 
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