Can I use the pfctl command in Terminal to throttle bandwidth?

The ISP I use (Northwestel) limits my upstream bandwith to 2 Mbps. While I upload at that maximum rate, the download service is disabled.


Plus, if I upload at that maximum rate for any sustained period of time (sustained being longer than about 5 minutes), my entire service is disabled and requires that I reset the modem to start it again.


As you can imagine, this is very frustrating. Especially when you consider I pay $125 a month for the service.


Very few apps offer an option to manually throttle upload speeds. Dropbox, for example, does. But Apple's PhotoStream does not.


So I'm looking for a way to globally throttle upload speeds on my Mac to a rate less than 2 Mbps so that I can avoid the above-described problems.


This has led me to the pfctl command in Terminal, which – from what I've read – would allow me to set an upload rate maximum limit in the Mac OS Mavericks firewall. The problem is, I'm a novice command line user and so can't figure out how to compose a command properly.


Does anyone know how to compose a pfctl command that would enable me to limit the upstream bandwidth rate on my Mac to about 1 Mbps?


Alternatively, is anyone aware of another way to globally set an upstream bandwidth rate limit on a Mac, perhaps a utility or app?


Any input or thoughts will be gratefully accepted.

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Nov 23, 2013 5:37 PM

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Can I use the pfctl command in Terminal to throttle bandwidth?

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