[ale] need help allocating / limiting broadband bandwidth between users

James Sumners james.sumners at gmail.com
Fri Jan 25 08:37:15 EST 2013


On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 3:47 AM, Ron Frazier (ALE)
<atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
> Next, I wanted to make sure my PC equipment wasn't hogging the download
> bandwidth.  I got the ASUS RT-N16 gigabit wifi N 300 router, which I will
> have all my equipment log into.  If you get this router, you HAVE to upgrade
> or replace the default firmware.  The original firmware is terribly slow, to
> the point of being almost unusable.  I upgraded to ASUS's latest, which I
> think they call AsusWRT.  I don't know if it's in any way related to DD-WRT
> or not.  In any case, it has features which can be used to control both
> upload and download bandwidth.  This is the first off the shelf router I've
> found which has downstream bandwidth control.  I ignored the upload
> settings, since my switch will handle that.  Here's how I set it up to limit
> the download bandwidth of everything coming through my router.  Doing this
> makes sure that her system will have a few Mbps of download bandwidth no
> matter what I'm doing.

Your switch has no clue what your incoming or outgoing bandwidth
capabilities are, unless it has some configuration you didn't mention.
The only way to effectively manage your ISP connection is to pretend
like you have less bandwidth than you really do. Thus, you are
pretending like you control both ends of the link. So, you figure out
your maximum download and upload speeds without QoS restrictions and
then reduce the figures by 10 - 30%. Thereby giving your QoS
implementation some overhead to work and keep your link unsaturated.

> I go to the qos screen of the router admin system.  On the automatic mode
> page, I turn qos on and tell the system that I have 6 Mbps of upload and 20
> Mbps of download bandwidth.  I then go to the user defined priority page.  I
> ignore the upload bandwidth settings.  On the download bandwidth settings, I
> set all packet priorities to use no more than 68% of my available download
> bandwidth.  This leaves at least 32% of my download bandwidth for my wife's
> use, no matter what my stuff is doing.
>
> I then go to the user defined qos rules page.  I delete the rules that they
> have there.  I create a new rule to apply to all traffic as follows:
>
> Name: All Traffic
> Source IP / MAC: blank
> Destination Port: 1:65535
> Protocol: any
> Transferred: 0~  (If used, this field allows certain rules to kick in only
> when a certain amount of data is transferred.)
> Priority: Medium
>
> This sets every packet going through my router to Medium priority.  Based on
> the priority rules set on the other screen, all these packets can use up to
> 100% of my upstream bandwidth.  However, the prioritizing switch won't let
> that happen.  For upstream data, my wife's packets will always take
> priority.  These rules will not let my downstream packets take up any more
> than 68% of my downstream bandwidth.
>
> For times when she's not working here.  I have a second router attached to
> the switch for myself which has no bandwidth restrictions.  I can use that
> when I want to do large downloads, etc.  All my equipment will be set to
> automatically log into the bandwidth restricted router unless I manually do
> otherwise.
>
> Hopefully, all these things will keep her system humming along quickly and
> her employer happy.  They wouldn't like too much downtime.
>
> Thanks to all who responded for their suggestions.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron


-- 
James Sumners
http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts
pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it
is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become
drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
CH:D 59


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