Request: Application bandwidth throttle

[stevenc317]

At first glance this may seem as if it is not a feature one would consider as relevant to a Firewall Application such as LittleSnitch, but please hear me out.

Unfortunately where I live we are stuck in the 1990's when it comes to 'high-speed' (if that is what you call it) internet, the fastest I can obtain is 768kbps DSL--I get a better connection on my cell phone, but that is another story. What I am looking for is a feature in Little Snitch that would allow me to set a bandwidth cap (throttle) on a per application basis as well as a priority per application. Currently I can easily cap download speeds using Speed Download, but applications such as NetNewsWire (which I love) will happily usurp all my available bandwidth for 2-3 minutes when it refreshes my RSS feeds. The ability to have Little Snitch setup a throttle on NetNewsWire (and other apps) would be wonderful. This in conjunction with a priority based system, whereas I can set Firefox and Safari to have top priority, Mail.app to be next, then whatever bandwidth is left over may be used by any application. This would need to be dynamic in that I want the ability to launch Little Snitch Configuration and tell it... ignore my normal rules and make application X have all the bandwidth it wants (such as for a download that I want to complete now). Then once it is finished I can tell Little Snitch to return to my normal throttling rules.

I know what I am requesting can be setup via Terminal (I think via iptables, I could be wrong), but life is short and I rather not do that.

Also please feel free to place me on your beta list and I would love to test this feature out


thanks

Steven

[stevenc317]

any one have any thoughts on this?

[paulc]

Sounds to me like this should be something for a firewall to be able to do... doesn't really fit with the main purpose of LS, which is to manage outgoing connections.

[Eriza]

I'm also in desperate need of a bandwidth shaper, and since little snitch has already a KEXT for monitoring application connections, it should be not too much work to integrate a bandwidth shaper (global up/down limit and per-app limits). Please consider integrating such a feature (or make a separate product), it would be sooooo awesome.

Danke!

[sriedel]

I am desperately looking for an application based throttling, too. For example, everytime I send out an email with some attachements, it's almost impossible to use the net in a productive way. Mail is hogging up all the upstream bandwith, and therefore the regular communication with all the other (web-)servers is no longer possible. Surfing becomes a pain, let alone working... By limiting Mail to e.g. 80% of the upstream limit, everthing was perfect. I just don't care if sending out a mail takes 4 or 5 minutes, but I *do* care if I can continue using my machine!

I think that Little Snitch could handle that (relatively) easily, so I decided to ask for it. I was just about to make a feature request on my own, but naturally, I was not the first to express that idea. So... BUMP!


P.S.: There is another thread regarding that particular feature , just to show that "we" are not alone

[sriedel]

No thoughts at all on this request? Devs, can you hear me?

[alexhaj]

I am a paying user and want this feature as well. Any news on it?

[janthurau]

would love to have this feature as well!

[alexhaj]

Do we not even get the dignity of a response. I want to be able to limit bandwidth instead of blocking it completely.

[ben123]

This is a very important request - can we get an answer? I am also a paying user and would like to have this

[epo]

I am a paying customer and this is mission creep, totally unrelated to LS's purpose which is to control the establishment of connections not the ongoing operation of those connections. If you want bandwidth shaping do it in your router.

Bad idea please ignore this request.

[akseeker]

I too am bandwidth challenged, and an easy-to-use per-app bandwidth limiter would be a great addition to LS!

[supersaiyansubtlety]

I am a paying customer and this is mission creep, totally unrelated to LS's purpose which is to control the establishment of connections not the ongoing operation of those connections. If you want bandwidth shaping do it in your router.

Bad idea please ignore this request.

No, this is not outside Little Snitch's scope. According to the Little Snitch home page, its features already include going beyond merely controlling the making of connections and specifically do monitor

the ongoing operation of those connections

-Real-time Traffic Diagram
A detailed traffic history of the last hour provides a powerful tool for analyzing individual data connections.
-Statistics
Discover processes and servers creating the highest data volume and much more.
-Data volumes and bandwidth
Observe the data volume and bandwidth per process, domain or server.