Ubuntu – Using trickle to limit the bandwidth of a VirtualBox VM

bandwidth

I'm trying to limit the bandwidth of a virtual machine running via VirtualBox.

trickle -d 5 virtualbox doesn't work, I believe because of an issue with child processes
(trickle -d 5 sudo apt-get upgrade doesn't work either)

How can I limit the download/upload bandwidth of VirtualBox's VMs?

Best Answer

VirtualBox has bandwidth limiting that you can enable via VboxManage.
See http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch06.html#network_bandwidth_limit

Limits are configured through VBoxManage. The example below creates a bandwidth group named "Limit", sets the limit to 20 Mbit/s and assigns the group to the first and second adapters of the VM:
   VBoxManage bandwidthctl "VM name" add Limit --type network --limit 20m
   VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --nicbandwidthgroup1 Limit
   VBoxManage modifyvm "VM name" --nicbandwidthgroup2 Limit

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to limit Download/Upload bandwidth

Limiting single interface is easy, but global rate limits need more complex rules as do application based rules. I'm not saying that it can't be done, but it requires quite a bit digging in to the internals of the networking.

Here is a quick How to on setting up a per interface limit

If you really want to set up application based rules, you should look in to some firewall framework, like shorewall, which have helper features to configure shaping. Even with these tools, it requires quite bit of forethought and testing to get it in to place. Doing something like this ad-hoc is not yet quite that easy.

Ubuntu – n easy way to limit user bandwidth usage

tc is the correct answer to your configuration needs.
tc may seem complicated because it manages classfull (and less) queuing disciples which gives it unlimited flexibility and layers of shaping and filtering.
This however is not the case. As tc utilizes the built in (or modular) queuing disciples in the kernel it the simplest/best way of limiting bandwidth on a per user basis.
Here is a sample set-up, I left it in Mbit format but you can change the rate measure to kbps.

tc qdisc add dev eth0 root handle 1:0 htb
tc class add dev eth0 parent 1:0 classid 1:1 htb rate 1Mbit ceil 1Mbit prio 1

For you iptables rule just change --uid-owner to the uid of the user you wish to limit, documentation says you can use the users name instead of UID, have not tested that.

iptables -t mangle -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -p tcp -m owner --uid-owner 1000 -j CLASSIFY --set-class 1:1

FYI even though you do not need an HTB I would recommend it based on the available options and what speed you are limiting to.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to limit Download/Upload bandwidth

Ubuntu – n easy way to limit user bandwidth usage

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