[MLB-WIRELESS] Tracking usage when sharing broadband?

[David Arnold]

-->"Bruce" == Bruce Paterson <paterson at tassie.net.au> writes:

  Bruce> I'm thinking of using a wireless router (probably airport
  Bruce> basestation connected to my mac) to share a broadband
  Bruce> connection with friends in the adjacent apartments.

cool.

  Bruce> Is there a way to track usage so if we know who's responsible
  Bruce> for blowing the download cap :-)

depending on how things are set up, this could be easy (or not).

  Bruce> And which router is recommended for this purpose (ie. which
  Bruce> has the greatest range in the apartment block context)?

i use a linux box, with iptables.  you can define accounting rules
pretty simply -- my setup has:

    /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth2 -d 10.0.0.129
    /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth2 -d 10.0.0.130
    /sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -o eth2 -s 10.0.0.0/8

(ie. one chain for machine of interest, plus a common upstream chain)

and i can report the current totals like

    iptables -L FORWARD -v

which gives 

    Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 1114K packets, 553M bytes)
     pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source      destination
    23444   16M            all  --  eth2   *       0.0.0.0/0   10.0.0.129
     154K  115M            all  --  eth2   *       0.0.0.0/0   10.0.0.130
     558K   57M            all  --  *      eth2    10.0.0.0/8  0.0.0.0/0

right now.

  Bruce> And is it so that the greatest possible one-way data speed
  Bruce> between the wireless router and the client will be 5.5Mbps?

i think the raw bit rate, in one direction, is 11Mbps.  but you won't
see that in ftp due to various protocol overheads.  through the
reinforced concrete of your average apartment block, you might ahve
some trouble with getting 11Mbps working too (ie. it might fall back
to 5.5 or 2 or even 1).




d

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