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Get Better Network Performance with Application-Aware Quality of Service
Posted by Adam Pash at 8:00 AM on March 5, 2008
Lifehacker Reader Jared Valentine tried ensuring a fast internet connection by setting Quality of Service rules on his router but found that QoS just wasn't working well for his needs. To solve his problem, Jared wrote an extensive howto detailing how to set up his computer to automatically detect when he's on a VoIP call, then aggressively limit his other traffic to make sure he's got plenty of bandwidth for his voice calls. The tutorial is not for the faint of heart, but if you can pull it off, Jared calls it his holy grail of traffic prioritisation. If you're looking for a simpler way, you may want to give router QoS rules a try to see if they'll work for you first.
Tags: bandwidth | how to | networking | router | voip
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
aaron8301
Posted 10:45 AM 5/3/08
dd-wrt FTW. The QOS options it has are beautiful.
If your router isn't running dd-wrt, either flash it, or get a new router that can be flashed with it. And not just for the QOS either, but also for the bajillion other options.
aaron8301
playdoh
Posted 1:45 PM 5/3/08
I use Tomato firmware on my Linksys and the QoS works fantastically. My VoIP works well even then I'm torrenting like a madman.
playdoh
hidden72
Posted 7:22 PM 5/3/08
I have tried earlier versions of dd-wrt and other firewalls. The ones that did QoS well usually ended up wasting bandwidth along the way (even when VoIP calls weren't going on).
That being said, I'll probably give dd-wrt another go and see if it's improved. Thanks for the suggestion on Tomato as well. I have a Linksys WRT54GL that I can try both on.
hidden72
rsweet2
Posted 8:19 AM 6/3/08
I ran into a somewhat related problem in terms of not being able to control or apply QoS to incoming traffic.
We ended up severely rate-limiting all but a specific set of protocols (everything except for HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, POP3, and IMAP). We rate limited all other traffic to about 1/4 of the total connection speed and dropped any traffic that went above that.
We applied the rule incoming on the external interface on our router. TCP flow control essentially takes care of the rest. The sending station does not receive ACKs for all of their traffic and so slows transmission is slowed. Essentially, for these protocols, the bandwidth available to them is now 1/4 of the total connection speed.
This is a very harsh and static solution, but would likely work if you wanted to specify a static 1/4 of your bandwidth for VoIP traffic and let everything else fight over the rest. Note that the other traffic would never use the 1/4 of the reserved for VoIP though.
We used a Cisco 2811 with Advanced Security IOS, but DD-WRT may work as well.
rsweet2