One of my housemates is abusing our broadband conection a bit at the moment with p2p downloads, so... since we have asked him nicely to slow it down and he has ignored us, I would like to know if it is possible to limit the bandwidth available to computers on our little network. we are using a d link 604 router, which is a bit cheap and cheerful and we have a variety of windows opperating systems, win 98, me and xp all running on the 4 computers.
Any ideas would be much appreciated
thanks

What OS is he running? If i m not mistaken the only MS OS able to manage your bandwidth is XP. Another simple way is to limit his bandwidth using the bandwidth trottle found in the the p2p program he is using. As far i know, only routers for business users allow their users to limit the bandwidth.

The simple answer, without doing any research, is probably you will not be able to throttle the bandwidth of your over-eager friend like you want.

As a more complex answer, you could place a machine on either side of the router to throttle the guy based on his hardware address (or input port if you're between the router and the offender). A simple linux machine would be able to do this, I'm thinking probably even a 200mhz machine. Not too sure though.

You might look into enabling QOS on your router, and setting him at what I call "priority dogs***". Put everyone else at whatever level you like. Some routers have this built in, others don't- that's the situation where the intermediate box that could do QOS for you would be a good thing.

As a final suggestion, get the end of the cable of the offender, and apply a tesla coil. Problem solved.