Trying to minimize Xfinity traffic or throttle it so low users dont want to watch it

[RichH]

I am not sure if this should be a traffic shaping policy or firewall rule.  My goal is to limit Xfinity TV by restricting the bandwidth or limiting its use to almost 256K for example.  Just to deter people from using it.

Any help on how to approach this would be great.  

[MarkiP · Accepted solution]

If you go to SD-WAN & Traffic Shaping, then under Traffic Shaping Rules, click add a new shaping rule.

From here you can add a definition, under "Video & Music" XfinityTV is already defined. You can then apply a bandwidth limit for this traffic (this will apply to all clients).

I suspect this will be the simplest and easiest way of achieving this.

[NolanHerring]

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@MarkiP wrote:

If you go to SD-WAN & Traffic Shaping, then under Traffic Shaping Rules, click add a new shaping rule.

From here you can add a definition, under "Video & Music" XfinityTV is already defined. You can then apply a bandwidth limit for this traffic (this will apply to all clients).

I suspect this will be the simplest and easiest way of achieving this.

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What @MarkiP said

you can block Xfinity TV outright 😃

[RichH]

Thanks guys.  I put in a rule to limit hulu, xfiniity, and netflix to 256K connections.  Great suggestion and I appreciate the advise.

[NolanHerring]

Out of curiosity, why not block completely?

[RichH]

Our mgmt doesn't like the idea of blocking it so I throttled it down to a point where nobody will want to use it.  Just a culture thing here I believe.

[NolanHerring]

Yeah I mean, if your hands are tied then not much you can do. However, I've found that limiting it to low speeds like that just makes matters worse, because people are persistent. So if they want to watch something, they are going to keep trying, and that is 'more time' on the wireless, consuming more airtime, slowing things down.

Example is wireless throughput limitations. If you set it to 5Mbps, and someone is going to download a 5GB file, its going to take them 5 hours (just picking numbers here). If you remove the limitation, then they download it in 30 minutes. So from a wireless perspective, you just freed up 4.5 hours of airtime that would have otherwise been busy as a bumble bee, buzz buzz (in a fashion). I want people on and off ASAP to keep everything smooth 😃

Of course...we are talking wireless here right? Anyhow good luck