How can I slow down my internet connection?

You could always just go grab a bunch of torrents (like linux or unix distributions which can run up to 4GB). If you make sure that your ports are set up properly you can almost completely saturate your connection.

If you have a router, some of them have throttling capabilities so you might want to check into that.

But really you should just kick that degenerate out. Doesn’t he know, video games are the gates to hell and he’s gonna get his in 2012. Or something like that.

I have a router, but it’d be easier if there was a software method for this. That way I can just get up (at, you know, 3:30 am), click a few buttons, and go back to sleep.

I’m afraid to do anything that’ll take too long to setup or dismantle, or anything that’s possibly illegal (download torrents gets iffy, even if it’s Linux or Unix). I don’t want anything with long-term repercussions, and that includes download massive files all night long.

I looked into some pinging software, but it doesn’t seem to be quite right. (I’m trying Ping Test Easy 3.29 and pinging 16000 bytes, if that means anything to anyone.)

My internet connection is 5 mbps, btw.

I also tried NetLimiter 2 Lite, but it doesn’t look like I can put a grinding halt to the entire internet connection, just the computers on it (and an XBox 360 doesn’t show up).

Any more ideas? (And thanks for the sympathy!)

I used to play halo a lot over my friends house and his brother would play mmo’s like silk road on the computer but he would just have 5–10 bot accounts running and it make the internet so horrible we couldn’t even connect to the halo servers.

Just download things like movies [[pure pwnage, etc]] that release for free via torrents [[completely legal]]. That includes Linux… then, pause the downloads when you don’t want them to be going [[ie, between 6 am and midnight]].

Then, when the download is complete, delete the file and download it again.

Downloading torrents over and over will max out your download limit quite quickly (if you have one), unless your ISP counts off-peak downloads seperately.

The best thing would be to buy some headphones for him and make him use them. I think it is unreasonable for him to ignore you asking to stop playing – most decent people would take into account what you’re saying.

if he has his own computer, turn off the firewall and download everything you can see.
hopefully you’ll get some spyware and adware thats on crack, and will just eat up your bandwidth.
and his computer.

I have a router, but it’d be easier if there was a software method for this. That way I can just get up (at, you know, 3:30 am), click a few buttons, and go back to sleep.

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Sounds to me like it perfectly describes logging into your router with a web browser and turning on the throttling feature. Am I missing something?

I think your DoS style ping attack idea might do the trick. It may be a little difficult to find the sweet spot on size and delay. Just hammer the xbox’s ip with a bunch of 1K (1024)packets until he quits. There might be some scripts out the to do it on some time interval like for 20 seconds every 4 minutes. I would bet that works, but I do not have an xbox to give it a test, though.
ping -s 1024 192.168.1.xbox

I would just try to kill the upload speed. It will kill his game if you neuter his upload. I would just find a cheap hosting company and ftp a really large file before going to bed. That should kill his gaming and only takes a couple clicks before bed. And no worries about legality, just upload the same thing every night.

“The best thing would be to buy some headphones for him and make him use them. I think it is unreasonable for him to ignore you asking to stop playing – most decent people would take into account what you’re saying.”

When you play Halo 3 on XBox live, you wear headphones to communicate with teammates. He doesn’t want to wear another pair at the same time, even if they’re in-ear headphones to fit snugly under his other pair.

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Sounds to me like it perfectly describes logging into your router with a web browser and turning on the throttling feature. Am I missing something?

Huh. You’re right. I thought the router idea meant screwing with hardware, not software. Right now, it looks like my router doesn’t have a throttling option. I have a Linksys BEFSR41 router, v. 3.0, if you’re curious. I’ll look into it. Great idea!

Another great idea is the ping suggestion. I guess I just didn’t realize XBoxes get their own IPs – I was just trying to ping Google servers. 8-D

I think I’m gonna try the ping idea tonight, since I can’t find a throttling option on my router. I’ll keep you guys posted. THANKS FOR ALL THE GREAT HELP!

BTW – last night I tried downloading four different Linux torrents, a la paulc and istandl337. Didn’t work perfectly, but he was frustrated by the lag and quit early (3 AM). YAY FOR SIX HOURS OF SLEEP!

I’m pretty close to computer illiterate, but I do remember something about being able to make your own computer available to crunching information for astronomers mapping the universe. It’s something that people set up to run at night or during down time ‘cause it slows down their computers so much. It you set it up to run during certain time periods, you might get the effect you want and help study the stars at the same time.

You’re thinking of distributed computing. Great idea! I just downloaded Boinc Manager, which manages several of these kind of projects. Now it’s set up to automatically run Seti@Home between 2:00 am and 8:00 am every day. Wonderful!

Still, I’d like to figure out how to ping his XBox too, in case the Seti@Home thing doesn’t work out. Here’s some info I gathered from his XBox network settings:

IP ADDRESS: 192.168.1.100
SUBNET: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
Primary DNS: 24.196.64.53
Secondary DNS: 68.115.71.53

I’m having a problem pinging his XBox. I typed this into a Command Prompt:

ping -l 1024 -t 192.168.1.100

but it doesn’t work. I can ping the Gateway, but not his XBox. Any ideas?

To -l (preload) a ping you must be super user (root). The -t does not have a timeout value (I think it is normally in seconds). Does the xbox not respond to a plain ping (ping 192.168.1.100)?

Yup, no response.

I tried other nearby addresses – 192.168.1.101 and 192.168.1.102 work, but I think those are for my computer and my other roommate’s computer. :-/

It may not matter that it is not responding depending on how it is switched. You might still fill the local pipe with traffic (at least enough to drop his ping down). Another option would be to just hammer your local gateway/router instead if the other does not work. I am not sure how much it can take, but I would think your computer could throw out more than it can take with the sensitive xbox traffic.

If your router supports bandwidth shaping or QoS, you might consider simply throttling the ports he uses for his game. Failing that, your router might also allow you to configure access to certain ports at certain times of day. Cut off the ports he’s using after midnight, maybe?

If you have access to the dsl modem utilities (Just type 192.168.0.1 on most modems) you can actually choose specific IP’s and mac addresses to ban. This was very useful for a roommate who refused to pitch in for the internet but who wanted to use it all the time. Just find out his xbox’s IP or mac address and ban that fool and get some sleep!

P.S. Some of the newer modems have time schedulers so setting it to ban him only at night will lesson his suspicion of anyone tampering with it