Prioritising internet traffic through my Belkin G Wireless Router

BuddyB · 27-02-2012, 20:04

Hi,

We have a Belkin G Wireless Router (Model F5D7234-4) and most of the time if one of us starts downloading something, our internet connection slows right down and as we have three computers, this is a pain in the neck.

The user manual refers to a Quality of Service (QoS) configuration and Protected Mode switch (please see thumbnail links below)

If I change the Protected Mode to ON, does that mean that the traffic will be more evenly prioritised between us for streaming, downloading, etc.?

Thanks!

Uncle Peter · 27-02-2012, 20:49

QoS and protected mode are completely unrelated. Protected mode, as the description suggests albeit in a very techy fashion, optimises the wireless radio performance of your router in a hostile environment where there are lots of strong signals present. Safe to say in most residential areas you should leave this switched off.

On domestic routers bandwidth management is usually implemented in a very rudimentary fashion. At best you will probably only be able to prioritise traffic by service (port number and protocol, ie: rudimentary QoS fashion) rather than packet shaping traffic by MAC address which is probably of more use to you.

BuddyB · 27-02-2012, 22:15

Thanks for your reply. I've had a chance to delve a bit more and can see what you mean.

Do you know if some domestic routers are better than others when it comes to this kind of thing?

Uncle Peter · 27-02-2012, 22:39

Consumer level routers are designed to be easy to use generally at the expense of limiting functionality so you are unlikely to find anything other than basic QoS.

iirc dd-wrt (not sure about tomato) supports real throttling down to mac address level as opposed to prioritisation which your router supports. Unfortunately your router is not of the type that supports dd-wrt.

You could still achieve your aims with QoS but that would be dependant on identifying which applications are eating up your bandwidth and how they behave.

qasdfdsaq · 27-02-2012, 23:43

Traffic shaping by MAC address is far more rudimentary than by port and protocool. In fact, by port and protocol is about the second best there is. By MAC is the absolute worst type.

Uncle Peter · 28-02-2012, 00:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

By MAC is the absolute worst type.

Not for the OP it isn't and that's the matter at hand.

qasdfdsaq · 28-02-2012, 10:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Peter

Not for the OP it isn't and that's the matter at hand.

Yes it is. It's just about useless for the OP.

Uncle Peter · 28-02-2012, 10:54

The point that's being missed here is that QoS is next to useless on a domestic router connected to a public network. The QoS flags are of no value once the traffic leaves the OP's network, thus, once the upstream link becomes saturated the value of QoS is negated as I have yet to see a domestic router that supports proper queue/rate management metrics.

So throttle/police/shape the offending clients at layer 2 is a quick and effective fix if it works properly (it's a Belkin) - then again it can't because it's not supported. Does the OP really want to sit for hours building and optimising QoS rules in any event? I doubt it.

qasdfdsaq · 28-02-2012, 17:46

QoS is absolutely not useless on a domestic router, in fact that's the best place to implement it. The whole point of it is that it is done in the router and so you don't saturate the uplink. Even the £5 DIR-615 can be made to have proper queue and rate management. Most decent domestic routers come with it built it.

Not sure what you're trying to say. It sounds you're trying to fix a lack of QoS by implementing the worst possible form of QoS. Which is just plain stupid.

The router in question doesn't have any QoS so it's all moot anyway. But even if it did it'd be idiotic to suggest dumb QoS based on MAC addresses is better than clever QoS based on actual protocols.

Uncle Peter · 28-02-2012, 18:01

I beg to differ.

From experience it does not work, not when you are battering an assymmetric circuit within an inch of it's life.

There is nothing "stupid" or abnormal about layer 2 policing. In conjunction with QoS/CoS this is a perfectly acceptable form of client management on shared circuits. We use it on the shared customer links out of our data centres.

qasdfdsaq · 28-02-2012, 20:32

Works fine for me. Here's an asymmetric circuit being "battered" by a dozen uncapped torrent uploads while maintaining guaranteed throughput for VOIP calls and latency for gaming with nothing but layer 7 QoS on a £5 consumer router.

Average ping never more than two or three milliseconds off baseline.

Left is is while idle, right is while running a dozen simultaneous FTP uploads.

Does not work my arse. And this is using a router with a supposedly crap QoS implementation.

And for some reason you seem to think layer 2 policing and QoS are somehow different things. Whether you throttle based on a layer 2 address or a layer 3 address it's still the same damn thing. The only difference is that there's absolutely nothing you can do with layer-2 QoS rules that you can't do better with layer 3 to layer 7.