Help me devise a bandwidth management scheme

[BikeMike]

Yes. Quotas have an option "all hours except" and you enter a time range (eg. 00:00-08:00) so downloads are not counted during that time.

[xpfalcon]

Thanks Mike, I am itching to get Gargoyle onto my router. A bit more reading required to make sure I get this right. Don't want to be bricking the router to restrict access to everyone, I wouldn't be very popular.

[Eric]

Xpfalcon: Just to be clear... there are 3 components of Gargoyle being discussed here:

1) Quotas, which allows you to set a maximum amount of bandwidth a user and/or all users combined can use in a given period of time. You can specify off peak hours when the quotas do not apply. This feature is the only one that will allow you to show users their bandwidth used without logging into the router. If a quota is defined for a given user, it will be displayed when they visit the login screen without having to login. The percent usage of a quota that applies to the entire network (including them) will also be displayed. There is also a table after you login that displays the usage of each individual user. The quota resets itself every given period of time (e.g. monthly), and old quota data is not saved.

2) The bandwidth monitor, merely monitors how much the entire network has used, as well as any static ips that are set. However, unlike with quotas, old usage data is saved for 15 days (for static ips) and for a whole year for total usage. Currently, non-static ips are not monitored. Results are displayed as a graph, and total network usage on a daily/monthly basis is displayed as a table

3) You can specify the timed restrictions you describe in the Access restriction section. This allows you to specify (among other things) specific times when access will be cut off for a given user and/or the whole network. This is completely independent from the off-peak hours specified in the quotas section (though you can use both features if you want, to block access completely at specified times).

I believe Gargoyle can do what you want, in particular by making use of the quotas feature. You can set daily/monthly quotas and be confident that a user cannot exceed the bandwidth allocated (unless they manage to switch ips). Right now you can probably get the information you want with the bandwidth monitor, though it isn't optimized for your situation. (In particular individual static ip data is saved for at most 15 days, and you can only display it as a graph, not as a table to get specific numbers.) However, I'm actively working on improving the bandwidth monitor section now, specifically for the kind of scenario you describe. I think there are a lot of people in a similar situation to yours.

You should find the access restriction settings work in a very similar manner to what you are familiar with from the default firmware, only there are more options.

[xpfalcon]

With the latest release, does the bandwidth monitor monitor only wireless devices?

[Eric]

The bandwidth monitor monitors all traffic that passes through the wan (that is, traffic to the internet, as opposed to another local device within your own network), regardless of whether it originated from a wireless device or a wired device. This is true of all versions.

[xpfalcon]

Thanks Eric, does anyone have screen shots of the bandwidth monitoring showing percentage left for a number of devices?

I think in the screen shots page there is one (14_quotas) for all IPs, I'd just like to see it with separate devices.

I know, I know, I can see it myself once I have installed Gargoyle, but I am waiting for the weekend, so I have plenty of time.

[BikeMike]

[xpfalcon]

Thanks BikeMike.