2.0RC1 Traffic Shaper question
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Is there a way to prioritize video data downloading from the Internet (youtube and the like) with pfsense? Is traffic shaper the right feature to use? I'm downloading in Usenet but it is taking all the bandiwdth of my cable modem and making video streaming buffer all the time. My plan is to make video streaming seamless even with Usenet downloading in the background.
How do I go about this?
Thanks.
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Is there a way to prioritize video data downloading from the Internet (youtube and the like) with pfsense? Is traffic shaper the right feature to use? I'm downloading in Usenet but it is taking all the bandiwdth of my cable modem and making video streaming buffer all the time. My plan is to make video streaming seamless even with Usenet downloading in the background.
How do I go about this?
Put video streaming and Usenet into separate queues. For example if you have 10 mbps symmetric link and video requires 5 mbps then the qVideo queue should be >= 50% and qUsenet be <= 50%.
p/s. Queues provides bandwidth protection, thus they are good even if the exact bandwidth requirements are unknown. Simply divide the bandwidth evenly and see how queues work.
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And if no one in my network is video streaming, Usenet will make use of the full bandwidth of the modem?
Also, how would I classify Usenet and video streaming?
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And if no one in my network is video streaming, Usenet will make use of the full bandwidth of the modem?
Sure. Bandwidth borrowing is the basic feature of many queueing disciplines.
Also, how would I classify Usenet and video streaming?
In 1.x there is a Layer 4 stateful classifier.
In 2.0 the classifier (more or less) stopped being stateful but it still works, and furthermore there is a L7 classifier that's some time worth trying.
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Hmmm, I can't understand your second answer, unfortunately :( Traffic shaping is new to me so I still don't know some terms. I hope you could explain it a bit more?
Thanks.
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Hmmm, I can't understand your second answer, unfortunately :( Traffic shaping is new to me so I still don't know some terms. I hope you could explain it a bit more?
I'm sorry I'm not a network engineer so the terminology I'll use may not be correct. Well every session (say, Web browsing) is initialized by a packet (Web request) from client to server. Base on that initiating packet the classifier creates a state before passing it through the firewall to the world. The state helps to recognize the return packet (Web request aknowledgement), i.e. to match it with the initiating packet (and, generally, with all packets of the same session), thus the return packet is passed through the firewall to the localnet.
In 1.x the traffic shaper takes knowledge of the state to shape, i.e. to enqueue localnet-out packets as well as the world-in packets in the correct queues. In 2.0, it does not: the local-net out packets and the world-in packets are considered absolutely unrelated even if they belong to the same session. And only the localnet-out direction is shaped, the opposite direction isn't.
The situation is similar if you have a server in the localnet that serves the rest of the world: only world-in direction is shaped. More or less, this is equivalent to a stateless traffic classification.
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Thanks for the explanation.
In simple terms, is it possible to guide me on how to achieve what I want to do with my pfsense's traffic shaper? What procedures will I do?
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Thanks for the explanation.
In simple terms, is it possible to guide me on how to achieve what I want to do with my pfsense's traffic shaper? What procedures will I do?
1. Follow the Traffic Shaper Wizard to create queues and to select traffics.
2. Use Firewall \ Traffic Shaper to edit queues, if needed. To edit queues means to change bandwidth.
3. Use Firewall \ Rules \ Floating Tab to edit rules, if needed. To edit rules means to recognize traffics and to assign them to queues.
In case you have a symmetric link, I recommend this config: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,28310.msg148002.html#msg148002
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So in my case, I make two queues, one for video streaming and one for Usenet downloading? And then I use the Floating tab to assign traffic to each queue? How much bandwidth should I assign to each queue?
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So in my case, I make two queues, one for video streaming and one for Usenet downloading? And then I use the Floating tab to assign traffic to each queue? How much bandwidth should I assign to each queue?
Let the wizard make all (seven) queues. Change bandwidth and assign traffics as I recommended in that thread.