How can I limit my download bandwidth? Sometimes, I require a lot of bandwidth  but do not want to disturb other's browsing experience.
At the university I'm often connected to networks for multiple users which requires me to limit my download speed.
Question
How can I limit my download bandwith?
OSX provides ipfw to define custom firewall rules. Using this tool you can create a pipe with limited bandwidth.

When you assign the throttled pipe to a specific port, this port's bandwidth is limited.

Quick How-To


Create a pipe "1" limited to 500KBytes/s via

sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 500KByte/s

Guide all network traffic of port 80 through pipe "1" using

sudo ipfw add 1 pipe 1 src-port 80

When you don't need the pipe anymore, remove it from the port using

sudo ipfw delete 1



Other


If you want to set higher traffic barriers, you can use MByte/s
Port 80: standard port for unencrypted http traffic. This port is used for most browsing and downloading. You should be fine with this in most cases.
Port 443: standard port for SSL encrypted https traffic.