On Sat, 30 May 2020 12:32, hw at ... wrote: > Hi, > > I'm looking for a good way to create a constant data stream that will occupy a > bandwidth of about 2--5Mbit/sec between two remote hosts over the internet. I > have full access to the hosts involved. > > My first attempt to use scp to copy data from /dev/null on host A to /dev/null > on host B, but scp says '/dev/null: not a regular file'. If something like > that would work, I would be able to limit the bandwidth of this transfer in > the router(s) involved so that it won't occupy all the bandwidth. > > Of course, it would be better if I could limit the bandwidth on the sending > side rather than dropping packages. I could probably write some program to do > that, but since I have never programmed such a kind of network application, it > would be rather time consuming. Maybe there's already a kind of tool around > that can do this. > > I need this to work around whatever settings my ISP has made 3 days ago that > block my VPN connection so that I effectively can't reasonably work anymore. > I do know what the problem with the connection is and that occupying some > bandwidth would unblock the VPN; only there doesn't seem to be anything else I > could about it. Hmm, last time I had such issues (~10 years ago), I had a ssh-server on one side running, and used scp from the other side: scp -l [banwidth in Kbit/sec] /dev/zero [user at remote host]:/dev/null For me at the time 150 kbit/sec was enough to keep my channel open. Others used netcat (nc) in a script to get the similar results (feeding it "lines" at a certain rate to limit the traffic) Have a nice weekend. - Yamaban