Setting up QoS Options

[HarkinFell]

Hey Monkey

Could you please help me setup up my Router with this QoS. So far it works well, I have two pc's connected to the Router and I can play BF2 while the missus is DL'ing on the laptop. But I want to go one step further and make sure that when I play BF2 it prioritizes that connection. But when it comes to setting it up I'm not too sure what to put. I'll put up a screenshot of the setup page and see if you can fathom it out. I even phoned D-Link up in the UK but I eneded up speaking to an Indian lady that hardly understood what i was trying to do.

[MonkeyFiend]

Was only going to reply to this in worktime, as it took a while to write

To get QoS setup correctly (although there are some limitations*) it's best seeing exactly how the computers are setup. I'll assume 2 pc's into the router. The main pc is yours and is used for gaming etc., the 2nd is your wifes - used for downloading.

My first point is that traffic shaping depends on what the traffic is? is your wife is hitting bandwidth on port 80 (web traffic) and so on or p2p (with incoming connections) like bit-torrent? Whether you want to throttle specific applications (or ports) or whether you generally want to assign higher priority to one computer for everything?

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General terms in the setup page:

Name - Just a name tag, can be anything

Priority - 1 being highest and 255 being lowest. The priorities are simple 'higher wins' and are not incremental depending on the priority range gap.

Protocol - Define a protocol number and/or type. (e.g. for streaming media/some games you would use UDP and for FTP you would use TCP)


Local IP Range - Assign the local IP address range. (This tells the router what IP addresses on the LAN are to use the given QoS rule) as in the private IP that you'd get if you opened a command prompt and type ipconfig


Local Port Range - Define the ports that you want prioritized. (e.g. Web traffic (http) operates on port 80.)

Remote IP/Ports -You do not need to tinker with these unless you are running specific inbound services on your machine.. like a webserver.

Remote IP range - Assign a remote IP address range. (Unless you are positive of the remote IP address range you want prioritized, leave this at it’s default setting. 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255). Usually you would be instigating duplex connections to the net. Certain things like bit-torrent may allow remote connections to be started, but since the IP's will be different assigning a smaller range isn't appropriate


Destination Port Range - Assign a remote port range. (Unless you are positive of the remote port range you want prioritized, leave this at it’s default setting. 0 to 65535) Some remote applications may send traffic out on ephemeral ports to your inbound one (such as MSN messenger)

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Sooooo.....

Assuming the following:

Computer #1 is yours. It has an IP address of 192.168.0.2
Computer #2 is your wifes. It has an IP address of 192.168.0.3

If you wanted to shape port 80 (web-traffic) you could create 2 rules that specifiy that your computer has priority over your wifes. (I will assume the remote part is moot as you shouldn't be allowing incoming connections on 80 unless you're running a webserver)

Rule 1:
Local IP; 192.168.0.2-192.168.0.2, priority 1, source port 80-80, protocol 6, << TCP, Remote IP 0-255.255.255.255, Remote port 0-65535

Rule 2:
Local IP; 192.168.0.3-192.168.0.3, priority 100, source port 80-80, protocol 6, << TCP, Remote IP 0-255.255.255.255, Remote port 0-65535

In the above for port 80 using TCP, if you and you and your wife are both vieing for bandwidth on this port then because you have a priority of 1 and she has a priority of 100, you would get the lions share of bandwidth.

Now more general; a catchall solution - instead of setting the specifics ports as above (port 80 Proto 6, TCP) you could instead use (1-65535 (all ports), proto 0, All) for both rules - this would mean your computer gets priority for all traffic over your wifes

Now limitations:

1. Some applications may form connections on ephemeral ports (next random unused port after 1024) so if you specifiy certain ports and that application uses another port, the bandwidth won't be shaped and you'll still liable to compete for bandwidth with another computer. Only of note if using specific ports.

2. Traffic shaping is not instantaneous, even with higher priority settings for your PC on bf2, you may still see a performance hit when your wife downloads on another pc. Most home routers aren't really geared to process packets in this way and while you may get priority and therefore bandwidth, it may affect lag.

3. Be vary carefeul of QoS and download managers (which are shit anyway) as these reroute queries through multiple ports to 'speed up' your downloads (again only of note if using specific ports)

4. If you apply multiple rules to one computer, the QoS will shape your own traffic e.g. If you have a rules that says you IP, port 21 (FTP), priority 1 and another rules saying your IP, port 80, priority 2. Then you are using FTP and trying to get a webpage the QoS will limit your port 80 (web) traffic in favour of your Port 21 (FTP) traffic

BF2 Ports: there's a post on the EA forums showing all bf2 port usage (made by me ) - i'll try and dig it out

[Edit: http://forums.electronicarts.co.uk/battlef...eld-2-port.html ]

A software alternative is to install net-limiter on the wifes pc

muhaha,

MonkeyFiend