Does anyone know if its possible to allocate a set amount of bandwidth to any particular device on a home network. At the moment it seems my sons PC takes up almost all of it when hes on YouTube or gaming online, slowing to a crawl for my own PC. Can I set a limit on how much bandwidth his PC gets? I have a BT Homehub 4 if it matters, and get roughly 6-8meg connection speed. All help appreciated.

Yes, but not with a cheap home hub / switch, you’d need an enterprise switch* or something like a Raspberry Pi which you could configure Ethernet QoS on (if you understand networking).

One possible frig would be to hang a second Wifi router off the main one (on a different SSID) and set that up to run at a low data rate and then have your son connect to that. I used this method sharing my Cable modem connection with the student house next door.

*eg see: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/allocate-bandwidth-linksys-45836.html

The feature you need in a router to do this is called QoS (Quality of Service) but I don’t think the BT Home Hub has this. So you’d need a new router (such as the Billion 7800 which does have QoS, I’ve just checked mine)

Try various size bits of aluminium foil between your sons Pc and the router. Obliviously located more at his end then the router end.

Or put his USB dongle on a long cable that leads away from the router

Problem with this is that if you limit his bandwidth the porn might not stream smoothly thus causing your son to be less than happy.
Also I suspect that limits you enforce will still be in place even when there’s no-one else using the BB.

Better router is the answer as above. I’m on virgin but just disable all the virgin stuff, hang a good router off the end and use that. TP-Link N750 if that helps. Loads of control over stuff like this. Not sure if it’ll work on a BT link though.

TP-Link N750

Yep, that would work: http://www.tp-link.com/lk/products/details/?model=TL-WDR4300#fea

IP-based bandwidth control allows administrators to determine how much bandwidth is allotted to each PC

Couldn’t it be done with a cheapish router and dd-WRT?

There’s also the Draytek range 28xx series that support QoS along with the option for multiple SSIDs that you can also set up with rate control and time scheduling for example switching off his WiFi access at a certain time every night, along with options for content filtering.

Can your sons PC be connected by ethernet? If so you need a smart switch, £40 for the enterprise grade one from Netgear, and then start mucking around with VLAN or similar. Enjoy!!! 😈

Couldn’t it be done with a cheapish router and dd-WRT?

Yeah, seems so…http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Quality_of_Service