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.

[HarkinFell]

See, what do I put in em blocks....Local IP range to? Remote IP range to? Local port range and Remote port range? Protocol I could just stick on All, thats about all I know.

[HarkinFell]

Ok so nobody knows then?

[Lawpf2001]

nope no idea

[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

[Lawpf2001]

[MonkeyFiend]

@lawpf

http://tinyurl.com/yt552u

[Lawpf2001]

$60 pfft ill read the dictionary

[HarkinFell]

Wow, thanx a million for the reply. It was what I was looking for but no-one else had a clue, especially me.

Ok so I manually setup an IP for Torrents etc so it should make this process easy.

So here is my IP config

Is it dangerous posting this kinda stuff up, if so I will delete it soon after.

I think i will stick to the catchall you mentioned..

So it will look like this


I left the Protocol on any, is that about right? If I have done it wrong then don't be scared to tell me off, I would rather get it right

Also on that page should I deselect Automatic Classification as it's defined as this:

Automatic Classification This option is enabled by default so that your router will automatically determine which programs should have network priority. For best performance, use the Automatic Classification option to automatically set the priority for your applications.

That would probably mess around with the stuff I put in manually.

Cheers Monkey

[MonkeyFiend]

catachall is probably the easiest - providing you generally want higher priority on one computer than on the other.

The IP that you posted is a 'private IP' - this is the address thats given to individual computers on your network and is not really publically accesssable (so no problems posting it) - I wouldn't post the one that begins in 82.x.x.x.

Yep the protocol should be on ANY (other options are ICMP, TCP, UDP)

The config as I read it basically says the computer witht he internal IP address of 192.168.0.146 gets higher priority for all traffic over the other computer with IP 192.168.0.147

I'd leave the auto classification ticked as this favours game traffic anyway, so shouldn't cause any problems.

In the current setup you'd be prioritizing your own computer over your wifes in general. The auto-classification will go one step further to prioritise different types of data on one computer: If just your computer is on and you are uploading some files by FTP and playing bf2 at the same time (!) then it should prioritise the game traffic.

The only other thing I forgot to mention is that the private IP is usually assigned by your router to any attached computers. If you restart the router it may not assign the same IP to your computer (the 192.168.0.146 address) - which would obviously mess things up.

There should be an option in the router config to manually set the IP of each of the attached computers

[HarkinFell]

The only other thing I forgot to mention is that the private IP is usually assigned by your router to any attached computers. If you restart the router it may not assign the same IP to your computer (the 192.168.0.146 address) - which would obviously mess things up.

There should be an option in the router config to manually set the IP of each of the attached computers

Thats why I manually set my IP adress in Windows, even if I reboot the Router or PC it stays at 192.168.0.146, the Router seems fine with it even though it's on Dynamic IP in the Router setup. Hope this is alright but it does seem to work fine so far even after rebooting the Router...

[MonkeyFiend]

yep - that'll work fine

[HarkinFell]

I have my IP setup through here

I found I had to do that so that I could forward a port for Utorrent

[HarkinFell]

Sweet, so I should be alright then? Thanx again Monkey, I would kiss ya if you weren't a man lol

[MonkeyFiend]

crikey, no need for threats!

[HarkinFell]

Alright then a simple Fankoo will do then

[HarkinFell]

Hey Monkey. sorry to bug you again...

yeah I'm still getting a bit of lag every now and again when the missus is downloading off utorrent, any suggestions how i could limit the amount of bandwidth she receives on the Laptop? You did mention a net-limiter, would that work? Would you recommend any specific free software that you know works well? Cheers

[MonkeyFiend]

hey - net-limiter is paid for but am sure you could work something out on that

If the lag is caused by bittorrent traffic then you could perhaps limit bit-torrent itself?

Because I work on unix/linux/windows I use Azureus as my bit-torrent client (since it works on all three os) and I know in that client there is an option to limit bandwidth, I suspect the option in uTorrent works in a similar way.

The usual culprit is upstream bandwidth.

In general, if you go to 'options' menu and select preferences... there is a 'connection' tab, where you can limit max upload and download bandwidth - making sure that you don't use the full amount of bandwidth you have means that the rest should be available to bf2/other network computers etc.,

[HarkinFell]

Yeah I do set utorrent up like that, I have the upload at 18kb and download on unlimited on the gals laptop, same on my pc aswell actually. What I've done is put upload on 10kb and download on 400kb on the lappy and also reduced the amount of global connections and upload slots etc...fingers crossed it should be better