@mentalinc:
and an lil extra questionL: shaping will only work on upstream data as by the time downstream gets to my box its far to late as the pipe has been saturated and my HTTP traffic for example is sitting at the ISP waiting its turn. is that correct?
Yes, the traffic shaper in pfSense can only shape packets exiting an interface but it can also shape downlaods by shaping the traffic exiting lan card to your pc (you can look at it from the perspective of your box uploading to your pc). In other words, download shaping isnt dependent on your isp alone, pfsense actively shape downloads just the same as uploads.
However if you saturate your link traffic will be queued up in your box and possible at your isp as well (or your isp will drop extra traffic), so its a good idea to set ur max download & upload speed to a fraction below what your isp advertised, that way your box will limit the traffic before your isp policing or shaping kicks in, you sacrifice some bandwidth to gain better control over your traffic.