FreeBSD: Efficient Bandwidth Control Using OS Filtering with pf

You manage a heterogeneous network and want to provide different Quality of Service agreements and network restrictions based on the client operating system. With pf and altq, you can now limit the amount of bandwidth available to users of different operating systems, or force outbound web traffic through a transparent filtering proxy. This article describes how to install pf, altq, and Squid on your FreeBSD router and web proxy to achieve these goals.

In an ideal environment, there would be no need for bandwidth shaping, OS fingerprint-based filtering, or even Quality of Service (QoS). Several factors in the real world require a change of game plan. Bandwidth is not free, and many ISPs charge customers based on bandwidth usage. Worms, viruses, and compromised systems can all lead to higher bandwidth costs. In the wake of the W32.Slammer worm, which saturated the connections of infected networks, many companies saw their monthly connectivity bills skyrocket due to the worm's traffic.

Filtering your connections based on operating system can go partway to helping keep such situations from running away. While I will focus on filtering traffic from Windows systems, this process can equally apply to BSD, Linux, Mac OS, or a host of other operating systems listed in the pf.os file on your system. This may be especially useful to people running older versions of OSes that have not or cannot be patched but still require some network connectivity.