Manual Quotas

Quotas

Location: Firewall → Quotas (with live usage at Status → Quota Usage)

Enforced bandwidth caps, as opposed to Bandwidth Monitoring's pure measurement — a quota actually does something once a device crosses its limit.

Like bandwidth monitoring, quotas don't apply to devices using a DHCP alternative gateway — their traffic never reaches this router's counters. A banner on the page reminds you of this if one's configured.

Creating a quota

Applies to — what the quota targets:

• Entire Local Network
• Only the following Host(s) (an IP or IP range)
• All Individual Hosts Without Explicit Quotas — a catch-all that gives every otherwise-unquota'd device its own separate limit
• All Hosts Without Explicit Quotas (Combined) — same catch-all, but as one shared limit across all of them
• Device Group — targets a group named on the DHCP / Known Devices page, the same mechanism Restrictions uses

Limits — set Max Upload, Max Download, and Max Total Up+Down independently, each either Unlimited or a numeric limit (MB/GB/TB). At least one of the three has to actually be limited — Gargoyle won't let you save a quota that limits nothing.

Quota Resets — Every Hour / Day / Week / Month, or never, with a Reset Day/Hour picker for the longer periods.

Quota Is Active — like Restrictions, a quota can apply Always, or be scoped to specific hours/days/weekly-times using the same schedule widgets.

When Exceeded — what happens once the limit is hit:

• Shut Down All Internet Access — a hard cutoff until the next reset.
• Throttle Bandwidth — slow the device down instead of cutting it off. With just the lightweight tc-tiny package you get simple Upload/Download speed limits (KB/s or MB/s); with the full QoS package (tc-full) installed you instead pick Upload/Download Class, tying the throttle into your existing QoS class configuration.

Only one quota can apply to a given host/network at a given time — overlapping quotas for the same target and time window are rejected, as is having more than one "hosts without explicit quotas" catch-all active simultaneously.

Checking usage and resetting

Status → Quota Usage shows the same active-quota list with live Total/Down/Up usage against each limit, and lets you manually adjust the running meter for a quota if needed. Quota values here display cleanly (no trailing zeros), and each quota has a Reset Usage Now button that takes effect immediately — no service restart required, unlike some older Gargoyle versions.

Practical example: a combined 50GB/month cap per unlisted device

1. Add a new Quota: Applies to → All Individual Hosts Without Explicit Quotas.
2. Max Total Up+Down → Limit to → 50 GB. Leave Max Upload/Max Download unlimited.
3. Quota Resets → Every Month, Reset Day → 1.
4. When Exceeded → Throttle Bandwidth (gentler than a hard cutoff for a shared household).
5. Save. Every device that doesn't have its own explicit quota now gets its own independent 50GB/month allowance, without you having to add each one by hand.

See also

• Bandwidth Monitoring
• DHCP / Known Devices
• Restrictions