Luigi Auriemma

Hey everyone,

Do any of you know of a good tool (preferably free, open source is optional) that allows you to limit the bandwidth on certain processes? In particular, I am looking for a way to limit the UPLOAD speed on the Blizzard Downloader application so that it doesn't suck up all my bandwidth when downloading a patch. The tool is basically a torrent client (with some custom/proprietary code I am assuming) that allows you to download large Blizzard patches for games like World of Warcraft.

Sadly, they don't allow you to throttle the upload speed with this application, and it uses an upload speed of whatever your internet connection can handle while you're downloading a patch. However, this causes your download speed to suffer because the entire upload speed is being used. Don't get me wrong, I will gladly seed to other Warcraft players who are also downloading the patch... but not my entire upload pipe.

I know there's editing the executable (I know someone will bring that up), but I'm just looking for something simple... such as a tool that is user friendly where you can just select a process, and choose your own upload/download speed. If nothing exists, it might be a good idea of a future project for you Luigi :P

Thanks for the help

Edit:
Here is decent solution for the Blizzard Downloader I have found that works if you use a pfsense firewall pc (version 1.2) :
1) Goto Firewall > Traffic Shaper
2) On the first page of the wizard, you will enter your average internet connection speeds (upload/download). Most of the other pages you will skip, but when you get to the "IP Penalty" section of the wizard, enter the internal LAN IP of the PC you're wanting to limit or 'penalize'. Also, enter the bandwidth limits you wish to set. Make sure to leave your download speed as the same value you set on the first page... you don't want to limit your download, do you!? And your upload at whatever you wish... but not too low or you may have problems talking to other people. I'd say the minimum should be about 48Kbps. You will set more info later to make sure it only limits the Blizzard Downloader... but for now it will limit the entire upload speed for that particular IP... so just hold on for a bit.
3) Once the wizard is done, goto Firewall > Traffic Shaper. In the 'Rules' tab (you should be there by default) click 'e' on the rule that looks like:
Interface: LAN->WAN
Source: Your.Internal.IP.Here
Destination: *
Target: qPenaltyUp/qPenaltyDown
Description: Penalty IP
You are now editing this rule. In the editing page, enter the source port (or source port range) of your application. In the Blizzard Downloader's case it's the single port 3724. Save the rule.
4) You need to reset your firewall states, as the traffic shaper changes only apply to NEW connections. Or you can just restart the Blizzard Downloader.. but I like to reset the active connections to make sure they are all closed :)

So basically, you are limiting by sourceip:port which ends up working just fine. Though I'd still be interested in an application that can do it like mentioned in my original post.

another idea could be to write a send/sendto hooker (for example a plugin for proxocket) for doing the job but I don't know if the result would be so good, it's not that simple to design.

while for the blizzard downloader if you get the torrent file you can use also utorrent or other torrent clients if I'm not in error (I did this test some months ago)

I'll have to give it a try with utorrent or Deluge. Thanks for the reply 8)

Yea I tried that, but had a problem with it. Plus it's shareware. I think I'll take another look at it, but I will probably end up sticking with the .torrent solution, or control it at the firewall level with pfsense if that doesn't work out. Thanks though.