My father just received a second letter from our cable provider regarding my delinquent brother downloading movies. They state they were notified by the RIAA (or some similar group) a second time about an illegal download and if it happens one more time the cable company will be forced to shut off our service. We depend on this company for TV, phone as well as internet so switching companies will be costly and a pain.
My dad wants to just get rid of the internet service but I’d really rather not have to go to my neighbors or the library to check email or pay bills when I get back from college for the summer.
We were promised after the first letter that the downloads would stop but obviously my brother can’t be trusted. Is there any simple way to throttle these large downloads from the router side? (rather than on his laptop). Ideally such a product could identify large downloads but not impact online gaming or legal downloads via the playstation network.
May 22nd, 2010 at 6:30 pm
ur ISP can SEE everything ur dl….more like the amount u dl, ie ur bandwidth. but peerguardian makes it harder for ur isp to see what being dl-ing because it blocks ip’s from ur ISP and others. but just dont dl anything big really, ur ISP wont saything, its those RIAA companies that care and mess wit ur isp.
now, its pretty simple just to keep ur brother off the computer, just tell ur dad to punish him if he uses it, plain and simple. OR i can tell u how to redirect the sites he is visiting. just send me an email
May 24th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Well, my suggestion is finding out which sites he has been downloading these movies from and going to your router IP Address on your web browser (192.168.1.1). Log into the router and edit the parental controls to block these websites. Unfortunately, this claims to slow down the router a slight amount, but hopefully not too much. A little bit of lag is a small price to pay for keeping your internet connection
May 26th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
Your best solution would be to just cut him off. You mentioned that he’s using a laptop. Change the WEP key to something different via your browser and don’t tell him it. Of course this way he can always use an Ethernet cable and plug right into the router anyway, unless he doesn’t know how to.
To change your authentication key:
Find out what your local IP is. Just google how to do so on your version of windows.
Take that IP address and change the last digit to a 1.
Put that set of numbers into your browser.
It may ask for a user name and password. Can’t help you here.
Then go into any thing that says security or wireless to find something names WEP key. It may not be specifically called WEP in your routers software. But I think this info will suffice.
May 27th, 2010 at 5:22 am
tell him to download somewhere else and disable the wireless if you have to
May 28th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
1) Not only will this company shut off your internet service, but no company will give you internet service after that.
2) About the only way I can see, as a parent, is to make sure that your brother doesn’t use a computer. Food is required – computer access isn’t.
3) You could block the port he’s using, but he could just use another port. There’s no way to block “large downloads” with a consumer level router, and you don’t want to pay for the equipment necessary to block his downloading. It has to be stopped at the source – his fingers.
Maybe if your father suspended internet service for the next 2 months? Then resumed it for the summer, but took your brother’s laptop away until you returned to college, then suspended it again?
Anything else and he won’t have to get rid of your internet service – there won’t be any to get rid of. The providers aren’t fooling around – either they shut off service, or they’re named in the lawsuit the RIAA brings against your father (or against whoever’s name the account is in) – and they’re not going to risk their financial existence for your brother.
BTW, nothing blocks your IP from your provider – they provide the IP address, so they know which router they provided which address to at which time (they log it and maintain the logs for a long time). The statement (that someone made) that something blocks your IP address from your provider is just plain silly.