For future use:

10:41 <@ejp> 'cat /proc/net/ip_conntrack | wc -l' will tell you how many connections are active

Disclaimer : I'm a rank amateur when it comes to network mechanics, both in theory and practice. The fact that the problem at hand responds to shotgun debugging doesn't mean I'm necessarily doing anything right, or that I even fully comprehend the options. Frankly, my brain has other problems to work on, and I'm willing to settle for being the only artist I know who can follow a conversation about linux.

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One of the nice things about being able to ssh to gridlock from work is I can do a little thing that would be a real pain in the ass to do at home - I can drop the interface between gridlock and the home network and See What Happens.

Lately, this is what happens:

A thing I miss about Jen - once I tweaked her limewire preferences, my pipe got useable and stayed that way. Randy, conversely, has been sucking on the thing so damned hard it's a wonder that gridlock hasn't exploded from the strain*. We're talking "I have to physically unplug his ethernet cable to get any degree of downstream" kinds of sucking.

If only the Linksys WAP I've stuck between him and the network could limit downstream as well as upstream :P. I'll experiment with capping flow control when I get home today - hopefully that'll solve the problem**.

Seems like I may be in for a modern version of the "war of the modems" I had with Brooke (my first roommate in the current house), with the difference being it's my money and hardware, and I have more control over the situation now than I ever did then. I really hate the idea of cutting off or throttling internet use. It makes me feel like a complete asshole. But in my mind, there's a difference between use of a free service and brutal assrape of a free service - the former isn't a problem. The latter obviously is, or I wouldn't be ruminating about it on teh intarwebs. I doubly wouldn't be ruminating if my roommate were easier to get ahold of.

13 hours later - hey, looky! : It was the router all along. A hard reset fixed the pipe completely. That's how it always seems to turn out. Kudos to ejp for the troubleshoot (and for adding bwm). All of my above gripes re : the roommate's bandwidth usage still holds, as a high volume of connectivity always seems to make the thing crap out.

20080411 : After adjusting his client and exchanging words (through paper), the problem has yet to resurface. Thank gid.

* It has, actually. And so has the DSL router. An enormous volume of connections has a tendency to make both of them sick. Sick to the point that my connection actually dies. Dies as in "no noise on the phone line for a few minutes." Dies as in "too many connections will cause the bandwidth to collapse from 150 KB/s to 40 or 20 KB/s and stay there until the router is manually reset." Or worse, just trail off to b/s and then nothing. Initially, I thought this was a hardware problem, but after extensive amateur debugging, symptoms and circumstances and evidence all point to user abuse.

** The problem is that we're on diametrically opposed schedules, so I can't exactly knock on his door and yell STOP RAPING TEH INTARWEBS PLZ. I've laid eyes on him twice since Jen left for RTC, which means indirect methods are going to be necessary as a stopgap until I can actually talk to him.