Lighthouse Controllers & Bit Torrent Programs

[tgreene]

Lighthouse Controllers & Bit Torrent Programs
Let me begin by stating that I use 2 Lighthouse Controllers. One is on my own system, and the other is on a publicly displayed reef system that I maintain across town.
For awhile now, I have been sharing my broadband internet connection w/ my neighbors, Russian immigrants, who use eMule to download Russian television broadcasts so they can keep in touch with their homeland. Unfortunately, I discovered the hard way, that bit torrents are quite unfriendly to routers and other connected equipment, due to quite literally pinging them to death.
For the past several weeks, I have been quietly working to find a perfect solution that would still allow my neighbors full access to my bandwidth, while at the same time keeping my Lighthouse Controller from being repeatedly knocked off-line, which was aggravating as hell... especially when I was traveling!
The following document contains a very precise outline of the steps that I've taken to resolve this issue, and it's been approved by MCU Research (maker of the Lighthouse Controller) for distribution.
http://www.nea-reefkeeping.com/downl...thouse-fix.pdf
-Tim
* While not tested on any other brand of aquatic controllers, chances are this would work for any controller that is experiencing the same issues.

 

[sly]

That's one solution... another solution is to set up QoS on the router so that the lighthouse contolller maintains priority over the bittorrent traffic. You can also go into the specific bittorrent program and limit the number of connected peers. I have found that about 80 is all you need to be connected to. Maintaining 200+ connections on bittorrent will not gain anything but will only implement a form of DOS attack because of the constant pinging to the peers.
Just change the bittorrent program to connect to fewer people.

 

[tgreene]

The issue for me specifically, is that I have no control of the actual bit torrent program settings, and while I have asked my neighbors to back them down a bit, it seems they always seemed to creep back up over time...
I was unaware of the QoS, but I will take a close look at it. Thanks.

 

[sly]

Yea, if your router supports it you can limit the number of connections and/or bandwidh alloted to their specific computer. You should see the mac address listed in your router's status page. With Quality of Service, you tell the router that that mac address is to have less priority than your Lighthouse Controller's mac address. There are also many different traffic shaping tools that vary from one router to the next. Not all routers have Qos but if it does, that is a free solution you could try.
If you don't have QoS on your router you may even be able to block certain ports by your router's firewall. If you limit the number of ports avaliable to them then you essentially limit the number of active connections they can run. I'm not sure which ports to block as it would take some time to research... but it would theoretically work also.

 

[tgreene]

I just checked, and my routers don't have QoS. Also, these use 2 ports for eMule, and so I really can't block them, and there is no way to limit the bandwidth.
If you would be so kind as to write up some type of report on using the QoS option, I will submit it to MCU Research as well, and then add it to my .PDF, giving you credit for the additional information.
-Tim

 

[sly]

The problem is that not all routers support QoS. My netgear doesn't... The routers that do support it all seem to implement it in different ways so really any documentation would have to be router specific.
Purchasing 2 IP's is definitely a good quick fix, but as you see it is costing you extra money per month. If you were to buy a router that supports QoS then it would pay for itself in a year or so by not having to pay $5/month on a static IP address.
I am not too familiar with the Lighthouse Controller? How do you access it through the net? Does it have an IP address (69.123.456.78) or does it assign some sort of DNS address (like www.whatever.com)?
Another solution may be to put the Lighthouse server in your router's DMZ. This bypasses all firewalls and puts it ahead of all other equipment on your network. I use VoIP and this is what I do to keep mine online. I do bittorrent some as well and since I put my VoIP in the router's DMZ, I have never had it kicked offline.
Like I said, there could be many potential solutions to this problem and maybe some of the ones I have suggested won't work. But each network is different... The truth is, home routers aren't good enough to do exactly what we expect of them. They are all in a sense, really cheap. If you are interested in a router that does QoS then look at the Linksys WRT54G. There are others that do it, but this one seems to be the one most people prefer.

 

[tgreene]

I originally had my LIghthouse setup in the DMZ, and it was still being kicked on a regular basis. I discovered that the critical aspect was to have pinging turned off, which completely killed the bit torrents.
With 2 routers on seperate subnets, pinging is no longer an issue, which is why I did not mention it in the write-up above.
To publish the lighthouse publicly, you obviously have to have access to a domain, then you assign to physical link to your IP, and tunnel in from there. Since my IP is dynamic, and changes every couple of months, I have to change the website to reflect the new IP each time. It does have it's own internal IP, but a router is needed to make the port translations.
To see what I'm referring to, goto: http://www.nea-reefkeeping.com/index-monitors.htm
From there, I can check anything, as well as hit the pass protected {CONFIG} pages to make any necessary changes to either system.
Since I run the reef club, I like having our parameters displayed publicly, because it can help others by seeing what some of us are doing.
-Tim

 

[sly]

Oh ok... One way to overcome the problem with your IP changing is to register with www.no-ip.com . From here you can set up your own DNS server of your chosing that will always point to your router's IP. So if you want it to be something like "www.reefkeepers.servequake.com", you can set that to be the DNS address of your router so all you will have to do is type in this address from any computer in the world and it will always resolve to your router/Lighthouse server.
Next, once you have registered a free domain name, you have to tell your router that you are using a DNS service such as no-ip.com. I posted a few pics to show what these settings look like in my router so that you can see what I'm talking about. With my router knowing that I have a no-ip domain name, anytime my IP changes, the router automatically tells no-ip.com my new IP address. Therefore my DNS name will always point to my router's IP even if that IP changes often.

Screen shot of No-IP.com configuration page (free service by the way)

Above is a sreen shot of my router's configuration page that lets you use a dynamic DNS service such as No-IP. If the IP of the router changes, it will notify NO IP so that my domain name will be directed to this new IP.

 

[spatrick]

Lighthouse controllers and Bit Torrent programs are used by large-scale torrent downloaders to share and store files.

Lighthouse controllers vary in their design and complexity. More advanced models might be able to check the bandwidth available and then distribute the load accordingly.

BitTorrent programs can be used for downloading or uploading files, as well as sharing them with other people on the internet. It’s not a centralized service like other P2P networks; it’s decentralized, meaning that there is no central server connecting all of the users together.

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