@Servo_Glasswire
Thank you for the response and feedback, i wasnt expecting any reply from a moderator let alone something positive, this is just even more reason to use your product, thank you and have a nice day.
More info about the shortcomings of router/hardware QOS for the home user:
Most users (home not business) of this software would likely not have a seperate router and modem setup, and likely use a bad enduser 4+ port wireless modem provided by their ISP. Most of these routers provide un-configureable on/off QOS which is terrible for anything other than HTTP/S traffic and thus solves nothing. (Default QOS delays packets at a certain bandwidth threshold, this causes ping spikes while gaming as 10/10 games use UDP network packets /w interp/clientside prediction for any dropped packets so packet delay means ping goes from say 12 to 200 for a few seconds every time the modem applies QOS).
To properly do this without software using hardware the person either must have bought another modem/router that natively supports MAC address or IP traffic shaping or is compatable with router custom firmware such as dd-wrt that adds this functionality. They’d be spending at least $80 AUD ($50~ USD) for a modem that supports dd-wrt and then they’d have to actually have the networking knowledge to first install the cfw, and then secondly configure it correctly.
If this feature is implemented i’d suggest a global PC speed limit for the free or basic license version (useful with multiple PCs to prevent one PC ruining the internet for another, basically the software version of MAC/IP throttling) and make the application by application basis only for the paid version of glasswire (this functionality is far more flexible and superior to hardware level management such as MAC or IP limiting).
Quick example of a scenario where a global speed limit on a computer would be useful, a friend has kindly provided me a speedtest result.
www speedtest net/result/4801383668.png
6mbits down is 800kb/s, he has slightly more than this.
If he could limit bandwidth on a computer by computer basis he could have 3 pc’s watching 480px youtube at the same time without lag/buffering issues as youtube only needs approx 200-250kb/s to stream youtube in 480px with a 1 second buffer. And he’d still have enough bandwith left over for a 4th computer to play MMOs or FPS games which use less than 100kb/s down (all of them) without any major ping spikes, or watch youtube in 240px or browse the net without timeouts or lag (pictures/gifs slow to load but reddit would be fine)
Simply if i have 2 pc’s and 8mbits of bandwidth i can limit both pc’s to 3.9mbits to ensure they both can use the internet without disrupting the other, this functionality (in a workplace) is typically handled by programmable/good routers so an idea would be to include it in the free version as a hook-in for the paid version (and so it can serve its purpose of been installed on multiple pcs at the same time) or in the basic license so its cheaper&easier than learning how to configure a router for the home user. The obvious downside is that you cannot multitask it or play with its flexibility.
Application by application limiting gives the user more control over what goes on and its less of a stonewall than giving each pc a set bandwith limit (what router limiting does and what the free/basic version would allow), this method is far more flexible.
For example (still using the 800kb/s download rate as a base)
If i limit just my browser to 340kb/s i can watch 720px youtube or SD netflix and at the same time play a game such as csgo which uses 40-80kb/s without any ping spikes or lag ingame, i could also go on teamspeak or a similar VOIP application which typically use (depending on codec) 7-12kb/s down per person speaking in the same channel/chat as you.
Without application by application limiting this would be impossible, i’d have high ping in csgo from the router QOS’ing the UDP packets to ensure the HTTP packets (video stream) aren’t dropped, teamspeaks audio quality would be terrible (also udp) because youtube would be attempting to buffer 10-30seconds ahead and i dont have the download available for it to get that far ahead in a respectable amount of time, netflix on the other hand would just attempt to buffer the entire video all at once and kill the internet until it finishes.
Furthermore i could combine this functionality with the global PC speed limiting to further split bandwidth up, say i have 8mb/s down and 4 users, each user gets 1.95mb/s assigned to them and then they can manage that themselves. Considering your network monitor can detect how many users are currently connected to the internet you could then automate the global speed limiting (if enabled by the user ofc) to automatically restrict the users speed depending on how many people glasswire detects as connected to the intranet. If its just me i get 8mb/s down, if my wife hops on glasswire limits us both to 4mb/s, if my daughter hops on its now 2.65mb/s each and so on.
Honestly just been able to set a 150kb/s limit on windows updates would be worth it for alot of people with bad connections, patch tuesday rolls around internet is out of action until the updates finish downloading…
And this honestly is just looking at the download side of things, i’d mention upload limiting and how great it is to prevent browsing timeouts and the like but most applications that involve uploading (dropbox, googledrive, filezilla etc) already include this form of self-management, the only example i can think of is when i was working on a dedicated server via remote access and drag’n’drop’d a zip’d update bundle to save some vps bandwidth which killed my personal upload speed for over an hour.
tl;dr Alot of people with this issue with little computer knowledge would greatly prefer to purchase an easy to use software application that does the same thing (and more!!) as hardware management as they likely do not have the technical skill to configure the router. This of course assumes they can identify local congestion as the problem in the first place
/e I edited this from like 3 paragraphs to a massive wall of text, sorry lol