VI. Feature Setup

The Session and Bandwidth limitation features are useful where you are concerned that individual users on your network might make disproportionate use of your Internet connection, causing inconvenience for other users.

These features restrict LAN clients identified by their IP address. For this reason, it is important that the PCs always have the same IP address so that they always have the correct limitations applied.

You can hard-code the PCs IP addresses or pre-set the DHCP allocations from the router (the latter being preferred).

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Bandwidth Limitation

You can limit the amount of Upstream and Downstream Bandwidth that any device on your network is allowed to use, based on their IP Address. Under the router's 'Limit Bandwidth' enter the range of IP Addresses you wish to limit. To configure a bandwidth limit for a single PC or device's IP address, set the start and end IP the same.

Rate is specified in Kilobits per second. For example, a '10 megabit' ADSL2+ line is 10000 Kilobits so to prevent a user consuming more than half of that, set the RX (receive/download) limit to 5000. TX is for transmission/upload limits.

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Session Limitation

A 'Session' is a single connection from one device to another across a network. For example; when you visit a website on the Internet your PC creates a single session between itself and the Web Server. When using NAT, your PC, the router and your onward ISP connectivity has to keep track of all of these sessions. A Vigor router, for example, might have room for up to 15000 simultaneous sessions - that's a lot, equivalent to connecting to 15000 web servers, however if you or your users make use of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) If you are the only user of your Internet connection, you can use the connection for anything you like without inconveniencing anyone else, but on a shared network it can be a problem and as system manager you may wish to enforce user policy by restricting sessions.

To enable this feature for a particular client (identified by its IP address), Under the 'Bandwidth Management' link select the Limit Session setup. Enable the function and define a Default maximum number of sessions per IP Address which will be applied to all devices on the LAN. In addition you can define more specific limits for single and/or ranges of IP Address. Enter the Start IP and End IP of the computers you wish to limit, along with the maximum number of Sessions allowed. If the setup is just for one single IP Address set the Start IP and End IP the same.

Figure 2 - Session Limitation Setup

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Scheduling Bandwidth or Session Limits

The Bandwidth Limit and Session Limit settings each have options for Time Schedule, this links to the schedule that is configured under [Applications] > [Schedule], setting a number will link to the schedule index configured in that section.

This example will demonstrate how to activate a session or bandwidth limit between 08:00 until 18:00 by using a schedule entry.

In the Bandwidth or Session Limit settings, enter the number 1 in the Time Schedule settings and click OK to save that change.

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To configure the schedule, go to [Applications] > [Schedule], click the Index 1. link to go into the settings for the first index profile, which will be used by the Time Schedule settings in the Bandwidth / Session limit settings.

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In the schedule settings, configure these settings:

a. Enable the schedule entry

b. The Start Date can be left on its default settings. Configure the Start Time to 8 : 00 to start at 8am, set the Duration Time to 10 : 00 so that the schedule will take effect from 08:00 until 18:00.

Please note that schedule entries used for Bandwidth or Session Limit schedules will ignore the Action setting and it can be left on its default of Force On.

c. Set the How Often setting to Weekdays and select the days of the week that the schedule should be active.

Click OK to save and apply the changes.

The schedule will take effect from the next point that the Start Time of the schedule occurs.

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