Firefox – How to control bandwidth in Firefox

bandwidthfirefoxthrottling

I share my internet connection, which is very slow, with two friends. When one of us tries to watch a video or download something, he usually "eats up" all the bandwidth. All of us use Firefox and want to control the bandwidth only for this browser.

The problem is that we use both Linux and Windows, and changing an OS is not an option. Is there either a solution that works for both operation systems, or separate solutions for each OS?

I've seen something called throttle but it works only with old releases of Firefox. is there any other option to do this?

Configuring QoS is not an option since the modem doesn't give that option.

Best Answer

On Linux, you could use trickle, which works for any application.

For example, running

$ trickle -d 50 -u 10 firefox

in the terminal will start Firefox and limit it to 50 kB/s download and 10 kB/s upload. For Firefox, make sure no other instance is running.

On Windows, you might give give a shot on Google. My first hit was NetLimiter, non-free, unfortunately.

For a more reliable and network-wide and cross-platform solution I recommend looking at configuring QoS on your router.

Related Question