NAME

nbdkit-rate-filter - limit bandwidth by connection or server

SYNOPSIS

 nbdkit --filter=rate PLUGIN [PLUGIN-ARGS...]
                      [rate=BITSPERSEC]
                      [connection-rate=BITSPERSEC]
                      [rate-file=FILENAME]
                      [connection-rate-file=FILENAME]

DESCRIPTION

"nbdkit-rate-filter" is a filter that limits the bandwidth that can be used by the server. Limits can be applied per connection and/or for the server as a whole.

EXAMPLES

nbdkit --filter=rate memory 64M rate=1M: Create a 64M RAM disk and limit server bandwidth as a whole to a maximum of 1 Mbps (megabit per second).
nbdkit --filter=rate memory 64M connection-rate=50K: Limit each connection to 50 Kbps (kilobits per second). However as there is no limit to the number of simultaneous connections this does not limit overall server bandwidth.
nbdkit --filter=rate memory 64M connection-rate=50K rate=1M: Limit each connection to 50 Kbps. Additionally the total bandwidth across all connections to the server is limited to 1 Mbps.
nbdkit --filter=rate memory 64M rate=1M rate-file=/tmp/rate: Initially limit bandwidth to 1 Mbps. While the server is running the rate can be adjusted dynamically by writing a different rate into /tmp/rate.

PARAMETERS

connection-rate=BITSPERSEC: Limit each connection to "BITSPERSEC".
rate=BITSPERSEC: Limit total bandwidth across all connections to "BITSPERSEC".
connection-rate-file=FILENAME
rate-file=FILENAME: Adjust the per-connection or total bandwidth dynamically by writing "BITSPERSEC" into "FILENAME". See "DYNAMIC ADJUSTMENT" below.

"BITSPERSEC" can be specified as a simple number, or you can use a number followed by "K", "M" etc to mean kilobits, megabits and so on.

DYNAMIC ADJUSTMENT

Using the "connection-rate-file" or "rate-file" parameters you can dynamically adjust the bandwidth while the server is running.

If the file is not present when the server starts up then the initial rate is taken from the associated "connection-rate" or "rate" parameter (or if that is not present, then it is unlimited). If the file is deleted while the server is running then the last rate read from the file continues to be used.

The file should be updated atomically (eg. create a new file, then rename or mv(1) the new file over the old file).

There will be a short delay between the file being updated and the new rate coming into effect.

NOTES

You can specify "rate" and "connection-rate" on their own or together. If you specify neither, the filter is turned off.

The rate filter approximates the bandwidth used by the NBD protocol on the wire. Some operations such as zeroing and trimming are effectively free (because only a tiny NBD message is sent over the network) and so do not count against the bandwidth limit. NBD and TCP protocol overhead is not included, so you may find that other tools such as tc(8) and iptables(8) give more accurate results.

There are separate bandwidth limits for read and write (ie. download and upload to the server).

If the size of requests made by your client is much larger than the rate limit then you can see long, lumpy sleeps in this filter. In the future we may modify the filter to break up large requests automatically in order to limit the length of sleeps. Placing the nbdkit-blocksize-filter(1) in front of this filter may help in the meantime.

FILES

$filterdir/nbdkit-rate-filter.so: The filter.
Use "nbdkit --dump-config" to find the location of $filterdir.

VERSION

"nbdkit-rate-filter" first appeared in nbdkit 1.12.

AUTHORS

Richard W.M. Jones

COPYRIGHT

LICENSE

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