Newsgroups, VOIP and QoS, oh my!
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Sander_Marechal Oct 25, 2007 11:53 AM EDT |
Hi all, I've ran into a bit of a snag on my home network. I have a 4 Mb down, 1 Mb up ADSL line. I never fill the 4 Mb down because the server at the other end is always slower than me, except when downloading from the newsgroups. They are hosted by my ISP and are lighting fast. I also have VOIP. Today I noticed that my VOIP connection really starts to degrade heavily when I fill up my 4 Mb down line. It took me a while to notice because I don't call all that much and don't use the newsgroups that much either. I use a Linksys WAG354G wireless home ADSL router. I tried setting the QoS settings on it (high priority for port 5060 SIP and 22 for SSH, medium for 80 and 443 HTTP(S) and low for NNTP 119). It helps with being able to browse while downloading, but the VOIP connection still sucks, though a bit less. What can I do to fix it? Can OpenWRT help? Does it work on my WAG354G? Is it possible to throttle down my newsreader? There are no options for this on my reader (I'm using Pan2 here) but perhaps through the OS somehow? Any other fixes you can think of that will help here? |
| number6x Oct 25, 2007 12:09 PM EDT |
something like throttled, a throttling daemon?
http://db.macports.org/port/show/2101 |
| tuxchick Oct 25, 2007 12:14 PM EDT |
I believe this is what you need: http://wiki.openwrt.org/MiniHowtos/QoSHowto |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 25, 2007 12:50 PM EDT |
Hmmm... from the descriptions of OpenWRT's QoS and throttled, they both seem to deal with outgoing traffic only. I need to manage incoming traffic. This probably also explains why setting the QoS on my Linksys din't do much for line quality: That's incoming traffic as well. So I suspect that Linksys' QoS is outgoing only as well. |
| tuxchick Oct 25, 2007 1:17 PM EDT |
It works both ways, just check the docs again. The main thing for VoIP is you want to avoid queuing, so these options alone might be enough: option:enabled option:upload:128 option:download:1024 Set your download rate to about 95% of its actual rate, or even a bit less. This might be all you need to do. |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 25, 2007 2:04 PM EDT |
Looks good. Sadly, my WAG354G is currently not supported (it's a work in progress) and known to chash occasionally. Not good, considering I'm running a server here that needs to be online 24/7. I guess that if I want o use OpenWRT + QoS, I'd better buy a new wireless ADSL router first. Any other options besides getting a new router that's OpenWRT capable? |
| tuxchick Oct 25, 2007 4:30 PM EDT |
Feh on inflexible hardware and pooey firmware! A pox! The Buffalo WHR-G54S supports DD-WRT, and you can get it for under $50. My preference is to put something like Pyramid or Voyage Linux on a real routerboard, like Soekris or PC Engines. You can often get good deals on the second-hand market, and then you have a proper setup that you can make do anything you want, instead of making hackishly do. |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 25, 2007 10:13 PM EDT |
Ah yes, I remember those boards from other articles you wrote. I don't suppose there's any board out there that does wireless, ADSL and Gigabit ethernet switching? If not, then just wireless and ADSL and 100 Mb ethernet. I was planning to buy a Gigabit switch anyway, but if I can just buy a sinlge box for all my needs, that would be perfect :-) |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 27, 2007 3:37 PM EDT |
Another question (since you know a lot more about this that I do). I'm in the market for a Gigabit switch anyway. Every machine in my house has Gigabit ethernet ports except my router/wireless/adsl box. I really want gigabit networking here at home. For example, I've set-up my computer to do a full backup to my server whenever runlevel 0 or 6 is entered (shutdown or reboot) and that can take quite a while. My plan is to hook everything to the gigabit switch, then one cable from the switch to the adsl/wireless router. Would it also be possible to set good QoS using a managed switch instead of doing it at the adsl router? Are there boards and linux distributions out there (like the Soekris board and Pyramid Linux) aimed at switches? I'm going to need at least 8 ports. |
| tuxchick Oct 27, 2007 6:58 PM EDT |
A managed switch is a very nice thing to have, and if you pick the right one it will do a lot of neat things like QoS, port aggregation, power over ethernet, VLan, and other things I'm too full of barbecued ribs to think of right now. It's easier than trying do all these things with a Linux router. If you're used to dumb switches, a managed switch will make you wonder why you wasted all those years without them. You're looking at $300-$500, which is way cheaper than they used to be, and they'll save you a lot of time and headaches. I should have thought of a managed switch from the start. Linksys and Netgear make good ones, and the second-hand Cisco market is a great place for those who must purchase Cisco gear. |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 28, 2007 3:06 AM EDT |
Thanks! |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 28, 2007 4:41 AM EDT |
Well, it's for my home network so I'm not tied to Cisco. But my god, how many options are there! Too many options and too little knowledge is my problem. I've found a couple of nice Linksys switched, but all reviews on Newegg warn me that the web interface only works in IE6/Win. I've found a HP ProCurve 8-port Gigabit web-managed switch for EUR 154. See http://www.hp.com/rnd/products/switches/ProCurve_Switch_1800... Would that suffice for my needs (prioritize VOIP and server traffic etcetera)? Also, wasn't there a company that made Linux-powered switching gear? |
| jdixon Oct 28, 2007 6:32 AM EDT |
> I've found a couple of nice Linksys switched... Linksys is Cisco. They bought them some time ago. Word is they'll be dropping the Linksys brand sometime in the future. |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 28, 2007 2:35 PM EDT |
I know, but there's a big price difference :-) The problem of the current Linksys webmanaged switches is that they require IE6/Win (pretty much all the reviews on newegg say so). Too bad, because I generally like Linksys stuff (I have an ADSL router and VOIP converter from them). So I'm looking for an opinion on the basic HP ProCurve I listed above. I'm hoping that one of you geniouses can look at the feature set and tell me mif it does what I need it to do. Just for completeness sake, I use a regular POTS phone with a Linksys SIP converter box for VOIP. So the VOIP will be on a different ethernet port that my computer and my server in the switch. |
| tuxchick Oct 28, 2007 6:32 PM EDT |
Dang, prices have dropped. Check this one out:
http://www.netgear.com/Products/Switches/AdvancedSmartSwitch... It's going for around $120.00. WTF is it with linksys and their deep luv for microshaft. Sheesh, it's a freaking switch. I wonder if they sell Cat5 cable that's windows-only. |
| Sander_Marechal Oct 28, 2007 10:43 PM EDT |
If there was Cat5 that was Windows-only, I am sure they would :-) That's for the advice on the switch. It looks really good, the reviews on newegg were positive and it's even cheaper that the ProCurve. Now to find a store here in The Netherlands that carries it. My favourite Dutch online store doesn't carry it, but they carry a lot of other NetGear stuff so I have asked if they can order it for me. |
| tuxchick Oct 29, 2007 8:58 AM EDT |
The one thing these lower-cost managed switches are missing is a serial connector. How can anyone be a real geek without a serial console? SIGH. But otherwise they're great values. Last time I shopped for managed gigabit switches they were still in the $500 range. Oh yeah, SNMP support is a good thing too. Linksys is thoroughly annoying, another thing I had forgotten. They poach plenty of FOSS code, but god forbid they should spare so much as a kind thought for Linux users. |
| NoDough Oct 29, 2007 1:12 PM EDT |
>> I wonder if they sell Cat5 cable that's windows-only. I think that's Cat666. |
| Sander_Marechal Dec 09, 2007 1:37 PM EDT |
Followup: I ended up getting the Netgear switch that Tuxchick recommended. It's awsome :-) |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 23, 2010 4:39 AM EDT |
Thread: I raise thee from the dead! Just a small follow-up on this. Although the Netgear switch I bought was able to prevent my newsreader from interfering with my VoIP calls, the lack of bandwidth throttling on my newsreader (pan2) was still a problem. Whenever I had to do serious work (I work from home) I had to disable it. Yesterday I ran into a very smart little Linux tool called Trickle http://monkey.org/~marius/pages/?page=trickle Trickle is a userspace bandwidth shaper. You can use it to throttle any application you want. I installed it (from the Debian repositories, it's there) and wrote a small start-up script for pan: #!/bin/bash trickle -s -d 200 pan This starts pan but limits the download rate to 200 KB/s. Now I can leave it running all day :-) I hope this is useful to some! |
| Bob_Robertson Feb 23, 2010 11:14 AM EDT |
(from the Debian repositories, it's there) Color me surprised! I'm glad it works. I also have VoIP and have to deliberately limit the upload speed of bittorrent, bittornado has --max_upload_speed as an option. (unlicensed anime, yatta!) Trickle looks good for those apps without internal speed limitations. |
| jdixon Feb 23, 2010 1:33 PM EDT |
> (unlicensed anime, yatta!) Agreed. :) Ktorrent also has that option. I've limited my upload speed to about 10% of my total bandwidth (i.e., about 15Kbps). The people getting the torrents of Slackware and Linux Mint don't seem to mind. |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 23, 2010 4:56 PM EDT |
Bob and Jdixon: Trickle can throttle upload speeds as well, if you ever want to use a client without built-in throttling. |
| gus3 Feb 23, 2010 5:02 PM EDT |
Given that NNTP uses TCP, why wouldn't slowing the ACK packets to the server work? |
| Sander_Marechal Feb 23, 2010 5:08 PM EDT |
@Gus: I don't see why it wouldn't work. But something like Trickle is just much easier to use. I have no idea how I would go about slowing ACK packets only for certain applications and/or certain destionation hosts (and any combination thereof). |
| gus3 Feb 23, 2010 7:03 PM EDT |
It would be an iptables thing, something like this: iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp -d --dport 119 --tcp-flags ACK -j SLOW-DOWN |
You cannot post until you login.