Feature request: scheduled downloads and uploads, transfers

[Cubytus]

Hi there,

it seems I am one of the few with a weird Internet plan: as unlimited plans are available but shockingly expensive, I had to resort to a 400GB one, which is rather good as it allows for unlimited uploads, but unlimited downloads are only available at night. That means I mustn't go over 700-ish MB per hour

Therefore, I wondered if it would be feasible to add a feature to fvdwsl so as to automatically cut downloads after a set number of GB during metered hours, and restart them when the unmetered time comes. Existing Transmission settings don't allow for that kind of granularity.

Likewise, is it possible to have a transfer meter that would only count data going to and from the Internet?

[Jocko]

Hi Cubytus,

Cut any downloads based on a reveiving limit why not.
But restart them later is more difficult and I am not sure it is worth.

What it may be is to stop an server like mldonkey, transmission,...if this limit is reach and restart the server later by using a cron job. For these features, retrievings will restart automatically but for ftp server you need to start again the transfers.

That means at least to write a daemon.

Since version 16.0, vnstat tool is available and yes we may add a gadget in the web-interface to monitor the network transfers.

But please to note, there is no easy way to filter transfers according their WAN / LAN status as the nas see only your router.

Also it seems that we can add easily the project vnstat php frontend.

[Cubytus]

When the NAS uses the ISP DNS servers, does it asks them when it needs to reach a LAN computer? If these are only asked when external connections are requested, that could be a way to tell them apart. Or assume all computers on a a given subnet, say 192.168.1.xx are local, all others external.

In my mind, the function I am thinking about would pause unfinished downloads or pause them to 0KB/s while allowing uploads of the partially downloaded file, reusing Transmission's own commands.

Also, my ISP does provide an API access to their data counter, but no documentation on how to use it…
EDIT: actually there's a Python script that would do just that:
https://gist.github.com/tessus/967c9b903e58d974907d
Is Python installed in fvdwsl?

[Jocko]

Why do you not use the feature "Alternative Speeds limits" with transmission?

You may set a low download speed on a scheduled time and otherwise no download speed limit (<=> on night)

[Cubytus]

I do use it. However, it seems to operate only on average, and doesn't count total transfer, meaning I go way over the calculated transfer cap.

What about Python? If the cap value is made available in fvdwsl, that could help design a way to smartly manage download speeds.

[Jocko]

There is a python package in the add-ons subforum. (maybe it is not complete for your project).

When the NAS uses the ISP DNS servers, does it asks them when it needs to reach a LAN computer? If these are only asked when external connections are requested, that could be a way to tell them apart. Or assume all computers on a a given subnet, say 192.168.1.xx are local, all others external.

In my mind, the function I am thinking about would pause unfinished downloads or pause them to 0KB/s while allowing uploads of the partially downloaded file, reusing Transmission's own commands.

With FVDW-SL there is no tool or daemon which binds the IP with the receive/transfer paquets, so you can not use this way to filter the external exchanges on your NAS. So that means you need a daemon monitoring the paquets and summarizing them.

[Cubytus]

Oh, so it treats private IPs such as 192.168.x.y the same as any other public IPs like 202.24.x.y…

[Jocko]

Yes the firmware doesn't keep IP information with the exchanged packets.

So you should consider to use the transmission feature.