Debian Administration

This article discusses using tcng with Debian, and has examples.

I've not used tcng itself, just tc, so I can't say how well that works.

There's another guide which briefly covers the same material and HTBH here.

I hope those are useful - if not I'll dig out the scripts I use with raw tc - mostly based on examples, I find it hard to understand how the queues work and am just happy it works!

Steve
-- Steve.org.uk

Trickle is a voluntary, cooperative bandwidth shaper. it works entirely in userland and is very easy to use. The most simple application is to limit the bandwidth usage of programs. trickle -u 10 -d 20 ncftp -d Limit the download bandwidth consumption to rate KB/s. -u Limit the upload bandwidth consumption to rate KB/s.

Quick and easy way :
Just change the marking packet rules of iptable in order to tag what you want :
http://roback.cc/howto/bandwidth.html (english version)
http://sylvestre.ledru.info/howto/bandwidth.php (french version)

Which is exactly what the wondershaper was designed to do.
Note that its purpose is to be an entry level shaper, nothing complex.

shaperd package exists in Debian, it uses iptables, and also userland daemon (i think)

"Keep ssh and http useable whilst doing downloads...."

I assume this is from a typical enduser client system? Remember the downloads are mostly "incoming", and you can't readily shape incoming traffic, as you want to shape at the bottleneck (or earlier), in this case probably the ISPs router.

As regards traffic shaping, the LART HOWTO has everything, it is a bit heavy, but it rewards the persistent reader. The only problem is my memory is terrible and I have to reread it every time I revisit traffic shaping.

Some interactive applications set priority bits on packets, if these are set (tcpdump is your friend) the ISP router should chuck download packets out of queue in a perfect world. Might be worth looking, and asking your ISP, if their routers respect these packets.

There are a few ways of slowing downloads, but they aren't elegant, and I've never found the need.

i'd have to say wondershaper is the way to go if 'simple' is what you want. it works invariably well.

for simple traffic shaping but only for the programs you use on your computer I recomand pyshaper which has also if you want a interface to set it up. The config is easy. It's a shame there is not a similar program to it but for servers. If anyone knows one please tell me

It kind of depends on how much you want to spend. There are plenty of products out there, but some can cost a lot. From what I've heard, Netequalizer is pretty effective and also affordable.