Roommate Troubles

[Ziggy109]

Okay, so I recently moved in to a new place and it's been fairly nice so far. There's only one problem I have -- my roommate's boyfriend doesn't seem to understand how bandwidth works and is constantly torrenting entire movies without setting a download speed cap. He does this all day, every day. I've asked him a few times to let me throttle the downloads and make sure he isn't seeding, but every day he's downloading something new. That leaves my internet pathetically slow, of course. I'm an avid player of online games, and I'm sure we all know how impossible it is to play with a ping of 3,500 ms. Heck, it took me about ten minutes just to navigate to this page and write this topic!

I was hoping some of you might be able to give me some advice on how to approach the situation and let my roommate's boyfriend know that his downloading is ridiculous. He doesn't live here, but he does own the router and has a computer here. Either way, I think that since I pay over half the rent I should be able to use the internet as I see fit and he should not be allowed to hog it.

Thanks in advance for any help you all can offer!

 

[Palfreyfish]

He owns the router? Okay, the easiest way to solve that problem is buy your own, routers can't be that expensive... Is he paying for the internet though? If not you can threaten him with legal action under one of the various computer misuse acts/laws/etc, but that's a bit extreme...

What I would do is tell him you're going to do some tweaks on his laptop to "speed up his torrenting," and then just limit the download speeds on his laptop. Chances are if he doesn't know about bandwidth he won't know what changing the download speed does.

Alternatively, if he doesn't let you do that, buy your own router and don't tell him or your roommate the password. If he does learn the password somehow, kick him off the network and change the password.

Quoting so you know I've been here

 

[Jedoro]

Quoting so you know I've been here

He owns the router? Okay, the easiest way to solve that problem is buy your own, routers can't be that expensive... Is he paying for the internet though? If not you can threaten him with legal action under one of the various computer misuse acts/laws/etc, but that's a bit extreme...

What I would do is tell him you're going to do some tweaks on his laptop to "speed up his torrenting," and then just limit the download speeds on his laptop. Chances are if he doesn't know about bandwidth he won't know what changing the download speed does.

Alternatively, if he doesn't let you do that, buy your own router and don't tell him or your roommate the password. If he does learn the password somehow, kick him off the network and change the password.

I agree with this train of thought. If dude doesn't even live there, you've got every right to just not let him on the internet.

 

[Ziggy109]

He owns the router? Okay, the easiest way to solve that problem is buy your own, routers can't be that expensive... Is he paying for the internet though? If not you can threaten him with legal action under one of the various computer misuse acts/laws/etc, but that's a bit extreme...

What I would do is tell him you're going to do some tweaks on his laptop to "speed up his torrenting," and then just limit the download speeds on his laptop. Chances are if he doesn't know about bandwidth he won't know what changing the download speed does.

Alternatively, if he doesn't let you do that, buy your own router and don't tell him or your roommate the password. If he does learn the password somehow, kick him off the network and change the password.

Quoting so you know I've been here

I don't believe he pays for the internet. He doesn't live here and doesn't pay rent as far as I know, so I don't see why he would pay the internet bill. If I ever get the chance to sneak onto his computer (which he leaves unlocked ), I'll try tweaking his Vuze settings to give it a download cap on all his torrents and see if there's a way to have torrents automatically stop seeding.

Buying my own router and not allowing him on the network would be one way to solve this, but it would cause a never ending shitstorm with my roommate that I don't have the patience for.

 

[Robert632]

He owns the router? Okay, the easiest way to solve that problem is buy your own, routers can't be that expensive... Is he paying for the internet though? If not you can threaten him with legal action under one of the various computer misuse acts/laws/etc, but that's a bit extreme...

What I would do is tell him you're going to do some tweaks on his laptop to "speed up his torrenting," and then just limit the download speeds on his laptop. Chances are if he doesn't know about bandwidth he won't know what changing the download speed does.

Alternatively, if he doesn't let you do that, buy your own router and don't tell him or your roommate the password. If he does learn the password somehow, kick him off the network and change the password.

Quoting so you know I've been here

I don't believe he pays for the internet. He doesn't live here and doesn't pay rent as far as I know, so I don't see why he would pay the internet bill. If I ever get the chance to sneak onto his computer (which he leaves unlocked ), I'll try tweaking his Vuze settings to give it a download cap on all his torrents and see if there's a way to have torrents automatically stop seeding.

Buying my own router and not allowing him on the network would be one way to solve this, but it would cause a never ending shitstorm with my roommate that I don't have the patience for.

I don't really like the idea of sneaking onto someone's computer and changing things on it, but if you've tried a diplomatic solution( Which from your OP it seems you have) and still no solution has been reached, putting a download speed limit on his computer is probably the best option.

However, I'm curious as to how you getting your own router would piss off your room-mate. it seems...rather insane to be pissed about that.

 

[Palfreyfish]

*snip*

*snip*

Buying my own router and not allowing him on the network would be one way to solve this, but it would cause a never ending shitstorm with my roommate that I don't have the patience for.

I don't really like the idea of sneaking onto someone's computer and changing things on it, but if you've tried a diplomatic solution( Which from your OP it seems you have) and still no solution has been reached, putting a download speed limit on his computer is probably the best option.

However, I'm curious as to how you getting your own router would piss off your room-mate. it seems...rather insane to be pissed about that.

I think not letting the room-mate's boyfriend on to the internet at all would piss off said room-mate, but still, if this guy's not paying for the internet, then you have every right to kick him off as and when you please.

But yeah, try limiting the download cap to something low, like 200Kbps. If he raises it back up, then just block his internet access whenever you want to play games. If he complains to his partner, then explain how seeing as he doesn't pay for the internet connection, he has no say in how it is used or whether he can even use the thing.

There must be some software that you can get that blocks Peer to Peer sharing on a router. I don't know, networks aren't my area of expertise when it comes to computers...

 

[Robert632]

*snip*

*snip*

Buying my own router and not allowing him on the network would be one way to solve this, but it would cause a never ending shitstorm with my roommate that I don't have the patience for.

I don't really like the idea of sneaking onto someone's computer and changing things on it, but if you've tried a diplomatic solution( Which from your OP it seems you have) and still no solution has been reached, putting a download speed limit on his computer is probably the best option.

However, I'm curious as to how you getting your own router would piss off your room-mate. it seems...rather insane to be pissed about that.

I think not letting the room-mate's boyfriend on to the internet at all would piss off said room-mate, but still, if this guy's not paying for the internet, then you have every right to kick him off as and when you please.

But yeah, try limiting the download cap to something low, like 200Kbps. If he raises it back up, then just block his internet access whenever you want to play games. If he complains to his partner, then explain how seeing as he doesn't pay for the internet connection, he has no say in how it is used or whether he can even use the thing.

There must be some software that you can get that blocks Peer to Peer sharing on a router. I don't know, networks aren't my area of expertise when it comes to computers...

Yeah...I realized how dumb I was being when I asked why it would piss the room mate off. Goes to show what not sleeping does, huh?

 

[Esotera]

If you wanted to shut him off permanently/maybe throttle him, checking out your router settings is probably a good bet. You can usually access this by typing in 192.1.168.X into your browser address bar (where X is either 0, 254, or 255) and it should bring up a control panel.

Through this you could block his device on all ports, and there might be an option for limiting the amount he downloads/download speed.

 

[Palfreyfish]

*snip*

*snip*

Buying my own router and not allowing him on the network would be one way to solve this, but it would cause a never ending shitstorm with my roommate that I don't have the patience for.

I don't really like the idea of sneaking onto someone's computer and changing things on it, but if you've tried a diplomatic solution( Which from your OP it seems you have) and still no solution has been reached, putting a download speed limit on his computer is probably the best option.

However, I'm curious as to how you getting your own router would piss off your room-mate. it seems...rather insane to be pissed about that.

I think not letting the room-mate's boyfriend on to the internet at all would piss off said room-mate, but still, if this guy's not paying for the internet, then you have every right to kick him off as and when you please.

But yeah, try limiting the download cap to something low, like 200Kbps. If he raises it back up, then just block his internet access whenever you want to play games. If he complains to his partner, then explain how seeing as he doesn't pay for the internet connection, he has no say in how it is used or whether he can even use the thing.

There must be some software that you can get that blocks Peer to Peer sharing on a router. I don't know, networks aren't my area of expertise when it comes to computers...

Yeah...I realized how dumb I was being when I asked why it would piss the room mate off. Goes to show what not sleeping does, huh?

Oh don't worry about it, sleep deprivation does that to people.

 

[Ziggy109]

I don't really like the idea of sneaking onto someone's computer and changing things on it, but if you've tried a diplomatic solution( Which from your OP it seems you have) and still no solution has been reached, putting a download speed limit on his computer is probably the best option.

However, I'm curious as to how you getting your own router would piss off your room-mate. it seems...rather insane to be pissed about that.

Yeah, I've tried the diplomatic solution. I tried explaining to them that throttling their downloads wouldn't slow them down too much, but would still allow me to use the internet comfortably. Their response was that "It's a Friday night, so the internet is slow", and my roommate added that I should just get myself a mobile internet stick. *facepalm* I managed to sneak on to their computer and set a 25kb/sec download speed cap on Vuze, though.

If you wanted to shut him off permanently/maybe throttle him, checking out your router settings is probably a good bet. You can usually access this by typing in 192.1.168.X into your browser address bar (where X is either 0, 254, or 255) and it should bring up a control panel.

Through this you could block his device on all ports, and there might be an option for limiting the amount he downloads/download speed.

I would have done that, but I don't have access to the router settings. The internet was set up in my roommate's name, and she doesn't even remember the username she had set up for router access. The two of them say they want to get a new router so they can get a new username/password for the new router and access the settings, but they both know so little about technology that I'm sure I'd be able to block his device without them having the slightest clue of what I did.