Free Network allocating software

[ajrettke]

I'm currently forced to use the crappiest internet available in the world.
1-1.5s ping times, and 128kbs cap...and $88 a month.

Anyway, I like to stream music while I'm surfing the web or multitasking. The music stream is 32kbps so I can still get some stuff done, but whenever I load web pages or anything the music will cutout since it's competing with firefox or other programs and cannot stream effectively.

Is there a free program that I can allocate 25-30% of traffic for streaming, then say 40% for FDM, and last for surfing? (downloading drivers an service packs is a ton of fun)

Thanks,
Aaron

[I.M.O.G.]

What you are looking for is typically called QoS in the networking world. Typically this is handled on the network, and can easily be done with good router software like ddwrt. I use it, and it ensures I can always load web pages quickly despite anything else transferring over the WAN connection.

I assume we are on Windows 7?

Windows 7 has QoS functionality built in as did older windows versions, but its not exactly user configurable. Details:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/109326-qos-bandwidth-reserve-limit.html

Basically, that link only lets you change the behavior of the system, and not assign priority to specific types of traffic like routing software like DDWRT does.

[habbajabba]

I use qtweb for music streams that I cannot load into xmplay but I surf with ff. I have a fairly fast connect so don't usually have too many problems doing both. There is no free simple solution. Cfos Speed is your best bet (not free of course) but I could not get it to work in windows 7. It worked great in xp though.