How to set a system wide bandwidth limit on Linux systems

• Author: Solène
• Date: 06 February 2021
• Tags: linux bandwidth

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In these times of remote work / home office, you may have a limited bandwidth shared with other people/device. All software doesn't provide a way to limit bandwidth usage (package manager, Youtube videos player etc...).

Fortunately, Linux has a very nice program very easy to use to limit your bandwidth in one command. This program is « Wondershaper » and is using the Linux QoS framework that is usually manipulated with "tc", but it makes it VERY easy to set limits.

=> What are QoS, TC and Filters on Linux

On most distributions, wondershaper will be available as a package with its own name. I found a few distributions that didn't provide it (NixOS at least), and some are providing various wondershaper versions.

To know if you have the newer version, a "wondershaper --help" may provide information about "-d" and "-u" flags, the older version doesn't have this.

Wondershaper requires the download and upload bandwidths to be set in kb/s (kilo bits per second, not kilo bytes). I personally only know my bandwidth in kB/s which is a 1/8 of its kb/s equivalent. My home connection is 1600 kB/s max in download and 95 kB/s max in upload, I can use wondershaper to limit to 1000 / 50 so it won't affect much my other devices on my network.

# my network device is enp3s0
# new wondershaper
sudo wondershaper -a enp3s0 -d $(( 1000 * 8 )) -u $(( 50 * 8 ))

# old wondershaper
sudo wondershaper enp3s0 $(( 1000 * 8 )) $(( 50 * 8 ))

I use a multiplication to convert from kB/s to kb/s and still keep the command understandable to me. Once a limit is set, wondershaper can be used to clear the limit to get full bandwidth available again.

# new wondershaper
sudo wondershaper -c -a enp3s0

# old wondershaper
sudo wondershaper clear enp3s0

There are so many programs that doesn't allow to limit download/upload speeds, wondershaper effectiveness and ease of use are a blessing.