Hay, i need to find a software solution to a problem. I want to be able to limit a Windows XP machine's bandwidth on all ports between 10AM - 11PM.
I have access to the machine in question, i need an application which can achieve this. I want to be able to limit to bandwidth to something like 10kb/s between these times.
Any solutions?
NetLimiter can probably do the job.
I was curious myself if Windows has an "in-house" way of doing this. Apparently, a part of SCCM, called Data Protection Manager partly offers what you are looking for, if I understand it correctly. That requires you have much more enterprise infrastructure than just a Windows XP box, so I cannot be certain that is even an option.
More in your ballpark, but still requires some infrastructure, is modifying a Group Policy, if you have an Active Directory Domain, is modifying Group Policy settings under Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Network -> QoS Packet Scheduler -> Limit reservable bandwidth. As the policy setting description states:
At least Windows XP Professional or Windows Server 2003 family
Determines the percentage of connection bandwidth that the system can reserve. This value limits the combined bandwidth reservations of all programs running on the system.
By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default.
If you enable this setting, you can use the "Bandwidth limit" box to adjust the amount of bandwidth the system can reserve.
If you disable this setting or do not configure it, the system uses the default value of 20 percent of the connection.
Important: If a bandwidth limit is set for a particular network adapter in the registry, this setting is ignored when configuring that network adapter.
This also requires you get intimately acquanited with WMI filters in said GPO's for your time requirement, but I am not sure they are that reliable (in terms of on the dime processing at a given time, since refresh rates, IMHO, are quite variable in larger, poorly-maintained domains common to big companies like I deal with).
That being said, these are bizarre solutions. I modded up the NetLimiter answer, but is anyone doing anything like this in a big enterprise environment? Would love to hear stories if it works well.
