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    Throttling youtube flash video or video streaming

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    • M
      montoya
      last edited by

      hello, i am a newbie.
      I have just installed latest pfsense. it works great.
      I notice most of our bandwidth are used by users watching youtube or like android TV from china sites etc.

      i like to find a way to throttle them instead of blocking it.
      any sample or tutorial will be great. TQVM.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • M
        MLIT
        last edited by

        Honestly, I think you'd have an easier time using something like Squid to throttle this than you would PFSense. I am actually using Squid to throttle sites like Youtube and it works well and it is fairly easy to setup.

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        • KOMK
          KOM
          last edited by

          What bitrate are you setting for your users so that they aren't complaining?

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          • J
            josueharos
            last edited by

            Definitely using squid delay pools should be the way to go from my point of view

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • M
              montoya
              last edited by

              @josueharos:

              Definitely using squid delay pools should be the way to go from my point of view

              could you please give an sample codes to achieve that. tq.

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              • J
                josueharos
                last edited by

                in squid.conf

                if you want to have exception list
                acl free src "/etc/squid/lists/free.lst"

                #Match URL
                acl stream url_regex -i .mp4$
                acl stream url_regex -i .m4a$
                acl stream url_regex -i watch?
                acl stream url_regex -i youtube

                delay_pools 1

                #set class (global)
                delay_class 1 1

                #set pool to 1kb + 100 bytes when inactive
                delay_parameters 1 1000/100

                delay_access 1 allow stream !free

                you can read more http://wiki.squid-cache.org/Features/DelayPools

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                • M
                  maryjohnston
                  last edited by

                  Is this perfect for new users ? Actually i'm new here on this platform and i'm gonna see this after some time.

                  SammyWooS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • H
                    Harvy66
                    last edited by

                    Squid is not an effective way to throttle because of HTTPS. You can do it, but it's very insecure and opens you to attacks because you break HTTPS' ability to authenticate sites.

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                    • SammyWooS
                      SammyWoo @maryjohnston
                      last edited by

                      @maryjohnston This information is 4 years old, perhaps pfsense's own has improved. Why don't you try the Shaper's Wizard, there is like a 2 pages of setting for commonly want-to throttle items. Select those items, place them in the low-priority queue. BAM! Notice this will throttle all users streaming including you. Save config before doing this so if unhappy, just reload config and you are back where u were.

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