Allocating bandwidth allowances on home network?

[Technique]

I don't even know if that's the correct phrase to be honest.

 

Basically i pay the internet at home but we're only on an 8mbps connection. In reality we get 7mbps on a good day.

 

Anyway i do a bit of gaming & it's lagging like hell & when i look in to it - other people at home are streaming YouTube videos. Soon as they come off YT my connection improves.

 

Is there any way to sort it so they get a fraction of the allowance/speed that i do?

 

The devices which are the main culprits are iPad's (just saying in case whatever it is that has to be done, assuming something can be done, has to be on their device & not at the router or whatever).

[sc302 Veteran]

What you are looking for is QoS.  This will guarantee certain types of usage and will give higher priority/more bandwidth allocation to that service.  Basically if your computer requests say youtube, it will give your computer priority and bandwidth over a device playing a game. 

[Technique]

In that case, what do i need to do this?

 

If it's at the router end then mine is a Netgear DGND3700v2.

[0sit0]

If it can't be done in the router it will be very difficult in an iPad. There are probably profiles that will help with that but I haven't seen something like it. Or you can use a crappy VPN, that will most likely do it lol.

In that case, what do i need to do this?

 

If it's at the router end then mine is a Netgear DGND3700v2.

 

page 55

http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/DGND3700V2/DGND3700v2_UM_05June2014.pdf

 

You will probably want to list the mac addresses on your network and give yours a higher priority.

[rr_dRock]

http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/24266

 

Here's an article on QoS with Genie compatible routers (Which I believe yours is).

 

Other than than, if you can find a custom firmware to flash onto it, do that, and enable QoS for the MAC addresses of the iPads you'd like to restrict (you can find the MAC in General > About)

[Technique]

If it can't be done in the router it will be very difficult in an iPad. There are probably profiles that will help with that but I haven't seen something like it. Or you can use a crappy VPN, that will most likely do it lol.

 

page 55

http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/DGND3700V2/DGND3700v2_UM_05June2014.pdf

 

You will probably want to list the mac addresses on your network and give yours a higher priority.

 

 

Reading that link it says:

 

"The N600 Modem Router supports Wi-Fi Multimedia Quality of Service (WMM QoS) to

prioritize wireless voice and video traffic over the wireless link"

 

Everything is connected wirelessley except the PC that i use - this is wired.

 

Does this cause a problem? Or do manuals just assume everybody is wireless these days & the same would apply to a wired connection?

[sc302 Veteran]

try the directions and let us know if it fails.

 

If you would rather not see that text you can do this, the instructions are the same, albeit less detailed.

http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/24266

[+BudMan MVC]

WMM Qos would not be what you would want to be honest. This provides that video and voip have higher priority that other traffic If anything it would be to make the youtube videos get higher priority than your game traffic.

Since your other devices are all wireless, you could go real basic by just lowering your wireless bandwidth to less than 8 mbps. Say set it to 2mbps -- now all your wifi clients share 2mbps, and that would leave you 6 no matter what they were doing.

But it does look like from the manual, there is qos for internet access.

[Aergan]

If it's on the latest "Genie" firmware and your Netgear device supports it, you'll have an option under: Advanced > Setup -> QoS Setup > QoS Priority Rule list  "Setup QoS rule".

 

For what it's worth, mine (currently an access point) is an WNDR4500 / N900 that does support it.

[survivegamers]

I actually want to be able to set a maximum upload and download speed by device.

[+sphbecker MVC]

The dirty truth about QoS that most people (even network "pros") don't know is that you can only control the traffic you and sending/uploading.  You have no effective control over the traffic sent to you.  With end-to-end QoS, you can set a policy that is honored by the ISP's routers; that is the only way to have true control over your connection.  Guess what??  Your residential ISP does not offer that service.  They use traffic shaping to their benefit, not yours.

 

In short, you can configure QoS to make sure your game always has bandwidth available to send (upload).  You have no way to prevent others from receiving, your ISP is controlling that.

 

I will say that in more cases than people realize, old slow routers, or crapping ISP integrated gateways are the cause of lag.  If your ISP allows, switch out your gateway for a basic modem, then buy a high end router ($100-$150 range).  Even without configuring QoS features, you will notice an improvement.

 

 

 

EDIT:  I guess it is worth noting that you can limited download traffic, it is just not always a good idea.  If your local router gets a packet for computer X, and it exceeds that computer's QoS policy, what can it do??  It can either deliver it anyway, or drop it.  If it drops, then that same packet gets resent and you wasted bandwidth, not saved it.  Normally that is a very bad idea and causes a lot of wasted bits.  The only good thing about such a configuration is that it might force another person's video stream (if that is what they are doing) to drop to a lower resolution; once dropped, then the sending server stops trying to send bits at the higher rate.  However, in the case of file downloads, it would probably make it worse instead of better.

[francescob]

The dirty truth about QoS that most people (even network "pros") don't know is that you can only control the traffic you and sending/uploading.  You have no effective control over the traffic sent to you.  With end-to-end QoS, you can set a policy that is honored by the ISP's routers; that is the only way to have true control over your connection.  Guess what??  Your residential ISP does not offer that service.  They use traffic shaping to their benefit, not yours.

 

In short, you can configure QoS to make sure your game always has bandwidth available to send (upload).  You have no way to prevent others from receiving, your ISP is controlling that.

You don't have absolute control over what you receive but HTTP servers wait for response before sending more data so slowing down the download speed works perfectly fine: the server will get responses less frequently and send less data as response. Also QoS generally doesn't drop packets, only slows them down unless you're flooded with them. With a 8mbit I'd be more worried about bufferbloat though (routers usually allow setting the priority, but not limiting the bandwidth, even *WRT firmwares (except Gargoyle) don't let you set everything up nicely without fiddling with scripts).

[sc302 Veteran]

The dirty truth about QoS that most people (even network "pros") don't know is that you can only control the traffic you and sending/uploading.  You have no effective control over the traffic sent to you.  With end-to-end QoS, you can set a policy that is honored by the ISP's routers; that is the only way to have true control over your connection.  Guess what??  Your residential ISP does not offer that service.  They use traffic shaping to their benefit, not yours.

 

In short, you can configure QoS to make sure your game always has bandwidth available to send (upload).  You have no way to prevent others from receiving, your ISP is controlling that.

 

I will say that in more cases than people realize, old slow routers, or crapping ISP integrated gateways are the cause of lag.  If your ISP allows, switch out your gateway for a basic modem, then buy a high end router ($100-$150 range).  Even without configuring QoS features, you will notice an improvement.

 

 

 

EDIT:  I guess it is worth noting that you can limited download traffic, it is just not always a good idea.  If your local router gets a packet for computer X, and it exceeds that computer's QoS policy, what can it do??  It can either deliver it anyway, or drop it.  If it drops, then that same packet gets resent and you wasted bandwidth, not saved it.  Normally that is a very bad idea and causes a lot of wasted bits.  The only good thing about such a configuration is that it might force another person's video stream (if that is what they are doing) to drop to a lower resolution; once dropped, then the sending server stops trying to send bits at the higher rate.  However, in the case of file downloads, it would probably make it worse instead of better.

I believe that has changed with new home routers as they do take in consideration your upload and download speeds.  The old qos would only care about your upload speeds.  I know the newer linksys routers support this.  They have a built in speed test to go against.

[+sphbecker MVC]

You don't have absolute control over what you receive but HTTP servers wait for response before sending more data so slowing down the download speed works perfectly fine: the server will get responses less frequently and send less data as response. Also QoS generally doesn't drop packets, only slows them down unless you're flooded with them. With a 8mbit I'd be more worried about bufferbloat though (routers usually allow setting the priority, but not limiting the bandwidth, even *WRT firmwares (except Gargoyle) don't let you set everything up nicely without fiddling with scripts).

 

It isn't possible to "slow" a packet down.  Every packet travels at the same speed, the speed of light.  A router's options are to drop the packet, forward the packet, or cache the packet to forward later.  Caching packets requires a considerable amount of memory and processing power on the router, SoHo routers simply cannot do it.

 

You are right that some layer-5 and higher protocols will detect the speed of your connection and throttle it on the sending side.  That is a function of the protocol, not the router.  It would be nice if that was a function of TCP so it would always happen with everything, but it doesn't work that way.

 

When you limit the downstream using your local router, what you are literally doing is trashing incoming packets over and over in hopes that the server will get tired of resending them and slow down.  It may or may not be able to, depending on the application.

[francescob]

It isn't possible to "slow" a packet down.  Every packet travels at the same speed, the speed of light.  A router's options are to drop the packet, forward the packet, or cache the packet to forward later.  Caching packets requires a considerable amount of memory and processing power on the router, SoHo routers simply cannot do it.

 

You are right that some layer-5 and higher protocols will detect the speed of your connection and throttle it on the sending side.  That is a function of the protocol, not the router.  It would be nice if that was a function of TCP so it would always happen with everything, but it doesn't work that way.

 

When you limit the downstream using your local router, what you are literally doing is trashing incoming packets over and over in hopes that the server will get tired of resending them and slow down.  It may or may not be able to, depending on the application.

 

Of course with slowing down I meant the packets are delivered later, the modem receives them anyway. HTTP Servers buffers are usually a few kbytes big, they don't send you megabytes at once so I don't think SoHo routers would have problems with those, the servers waits until the client confirms the data has been received before proceeding to send the next small batch of data so the buffer doesn't have to be relatively big. Of course this depends on which service we're talking about, an HTTP server waits for response, other kind of servers or P2P traffic may flood you with data and the router may have to drop it. I have never seen download speeds drop when downloading with multiple devices with QoS on but I have to admit I only set QoS up on WRT routers, maybe stock firmwares could drop packets like there's no tomorrow. All this of course if we're talking about a QoS that is aware of the available bandwidth, if it only allows setting up the priority then the problem becomes much worse.

[+sphbecker MVC]

You are right, in a scenario where you have only a few sessions using a connection, where the sessions are typically established and maintained for a long time (watching a movie or downloading a file over HTTP), downstream QoS policies would be pretty effective due to the fact many protocols auto-scale on the sending side.  I typically work on larger networks with 100-1000 users, and in that scenario you have a high volume of short sessions, downstream QoS tends to make things worse, not better.

 

One thing I would question is how downstream QoS would effect torrent traffic.  Torrents by nature create several dozen to several hundred sessions that each send data sporadically.  I suspect downstream QoS would have a negative impact there.  Upstream QoS really shines with torrent traffic and other types of heavy uploads that could cripple a connection not using QoS.

 

Routers have a pretty short maximum queue length.  Cisco IOS routers can be configured with a queue length up to 4,096 packets per interface.  That might sound like a lot, but getting over 4k packets in a second is not uncommon on that type of router (just looked at my router at work and for the last 5 minutes it averaged 7972 packets per seconds or pps).  My point is that even on a high-end Cisco router, the max time it could hold a packet, before being forced to drop it, is less than one second.  I honestly do not know the max queue on a typical personal router, but with them normally only having 32-128 MB of RAM and high end routers have multiple Gigabytes of it, I suspect it is much lower.  I would be really surprised if the QoS engine on a SoHo router even interacted with the queue.  It most likely makes simple forward/drop decisions, but implementations may very on that.

[+PeterUK MVC]

QoS has problems when your dealing with latency so if you setup video streams from subnets in a high queue with high minimum/guaranteed bandwidth and lower queues for downloads that should you video stream with high latency to the stream with downloads going on at low latency to a server your video stream will drop but if your video stream with low latency to the stream you get less drops when downloading as well.

 

Another problem is the way QoS work with bandwidth total and queue is that if you think of your total bandwidth buffer as one bucket with queues being smaller buckets that are virtual in the one bucket that is a flawed design in that low queue buckets can over fill and fill the one bucket causing packets to be dropped for high queue buckets. The way it could be is lower queue buckets are buffers and should drop packets in their own buffer allowing incoming packets that are for higher queue buckets go into their own high queue and be scheduled on.