Playing with fq_codel in 2.4

moscato359

Is there any chance fq_codel will make it into the 2.4 GUI in limiters?

w0w

Definitely not!
They are keeping eyes on it, but currently no plans, no moves, AFAIK.

sofakng

Darn. I'm thinking about switching back to pfSense but I really want fq_codel.

Harvy66

fq_codel, the ZFS of AQMs, or nearly. Cake aims to be the "ZFS", but close enough.

superbree

Is the command of "ipfw sched 1 config pipe 1 type fq_codel && ipfw sched 2 config pipe 2 type fq_codel" the same if I only have 2 root limiters? Both of them are root limiters one has a mask of source and the other has a mask of destination.

I would like to try this out but wondering if the command is different for just root limiters without "child" queues. Obviously I am highly dependent on the gui I am a bit confused with the ipfw command since it references both sched and pipe.

Thanks for any reply!

w0w

TS sample is for the root limiters also, if you have some troubles understanding, post the content of your /tmp/rules.limiter

superbree

here is the content of my /tmp/rules.limiter

pipe 1 config bw 100Mb mask dst-ip6 /128 dst-ip 0xffffffff

pipe 2 config bw 10Mb mask src-ip6 /128 src-ip 0xffffffff

I need help with the ipfw command to enable fq_codel on pipes 1 and 2 because i don't have any child queues.

thanks in advance

w0w

According to documentation posted in this thread you need to configure sheduler at least to make things work.


pipe 1 config bw 100Mb mask dst-ip6 /128 dst-ip 0xffffffff
sched 1 config pipe 1 type fq_codel 

pipe 2 config bw 10Mb mask src-ip6 /128 src-ip 0xffffffff
sched 2 config pipe 2 type fq_codel

EDIT:
Tested, it will not work. You need to configure child queues and use them in ruleset, exactly as described by TS. Default automatically created pipe queue always uses FIFO sheduler and I am not sure it is possible to change this.

So after changes made in GUI also, you must edit and create your own rules.limiter that should look like this.


pipe 1 config bw 100Mb 
sched 1 config pipe 1 type fq_codel
queue 1 config pipe 1 mask dst-ip6 /128 dst-ip 0xffffffff

pipe 2 config bw 10Mb mask 
sched 2 config pipe 2 type fq_codel
queue 2 config pipe 2 mask src-ip6 /128 src-ip 0xffffffff

So the right answer is no you can not shape with fq_codel using only root limiters.

superbree

Thats really too bad. We use PFsense primarily to "specify bandwidth limits per host." for a small ISP.

I really wish I could find a way to limit a subnet to say 100Mbs and then limit each ip host address in the subnet to 5 Mbs. And then have each IP address dynamically shaped if the overall link was approaching the 100Mbs total.

Is it possible to combine and use ALTQ and Dummynet at the same time? Has anyone tried that or have a config example?

I guess I could use limiters on 2 PFsense boxes. First one limiting each host to 5 Mbps using limiters with a destination/source mask. And the second limiting the entire subnet to 100Mbs using limiters without a mask and changing the type from WF2Q+ to FQ_Codel by issuing the command "ipfw pipe 1 config bw 100Mb type fq_codel"

I hope thats not too confusing. Anyone have a more eloquent way of trying this?

As always, thank you for any reply.

w0w

Yes it's possible, but you will have some overheads and losses, you can try it at least, I think. Just set your per host limits on ALTQ shaper side and do your evenly shared FQ_CODEL enabled limiters exactly as TS described for you entire subnet.
I am sure it is possible to build ipfw only shaper model that works like you want it to work, but it would be complicated not only with pfSense and can cause some errors on pfSense.

cplmayo

Got this setup! Thank you so much! I have been waiting for a way to run FQ_Codel on my pfsense box for a while now. Granted it had to be hacked on but it worked!

Has anyone been running Suricata with 2.4 and fq_codel? Until I removed the suricata package my connection would keep dropping and I had lots of issues. So far so good.

I also had to enable Hardware checksum offloading and TCP Segmentation offloading. I may have to re-enable these at some point but at the moment everything is going well.

My last speed test.

meruem

@cplmayo:

Got this setup! Thank you so much! I have been waiting for a way to run FQ_Codel on my pfsense box for a while now. Granted it had to be hacked on but it worked!

Has anyone been running Suricata with 2.4 and fq_codel? Until I removed the suricata package my connection would keep dropping and I had lots of issues. So far so good.

I also had to enable Hardware checksum offloading and TCP Segmentation offloading. I may have to re-enable these at some point but at the moment everything is going well.

My last speed test.

enable re-enable or disable re-enable or enable re-disable or .. ?

belt9

@Harvy66:

fq_codel, the ZFS of AQMs, or nearly. Cake aims to be the "ZFS", but close enough.

This is very interesting.

Any chance someone(s) knowledgeable would be willing to put together a single post along the lines of this - https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=126597.0

Kind of like an fq_codel one-stop shop for the layman?

chrcoluk

ok am finally testing this and got it working.

I had observed some iptv/vpn issues that seemed to only occur when my ingress altq config was active, so am now testing this configuration. I have not yet tested if this is as effective as hsfc alt for keeping steam downloads in check, I had to set the dummynet limiter to 95% of downstream cap to even get a 6 threaded downstream test to stop causing packetloss, so not confident that will be enough for a 30+ stream steam download but will see.

How granular is this? can I e.g. route steam etc. all through it but at the same time applying a limit less than 95% for steam download whilst keeping things like youtube able to burst higher. All on dummynet. As I have a feeling I will need to drop this to at least 90% to manage steam but I consider that too low for lighter threaded stuff.

belt9

The percentage of bandwidth you pay for is situationally dependent. If you always get 100% of what your isp says they'll give you then 95% works. If it dips to 94% of what you subscribe for and you set dummynet to 95% then dummynet can't do anything for you.

It's a granular as firewall rules can be

chrcoluk

@belt9:

The percentage of bandwidth you pay for is situationally dependent. If you always get 100% of what your isp says they'll give you then 95% works. If it dips to 94% of what you subscribe for and you set dummynet to 95% then dummynet can't do anything for you.

It's a granular as firewall rules can be

shaping is nowhere near that simple.

The reason steam is harder to shape is it opens so many threads.

I always get 100% from my isp but it doesnt mean 95% will always work well for all types of traffic.

Looking at dummynet configuration it looks like multiple specific rate limits cannot be set within one pipe however weighting can be applied so I can put steam downloads on a low weight and things like dns lookups and emails on a high weight, this is what I will look into on my config next. Thanks to the OP giving me a starting point. :)

AltQ on PFSense is incredibly granular but of course someone has put the effort into integrating it all into the GUI, and AltQ itself allows children in a queue to have their own limits set.

Already got some good results.

When I setup the dummynet config (basic as in the OP) I had a iptv stream running to my STB and I can see from my ping monitoring on my connection, the peak latency has plummeted, it was an almost steady increase in peak latency, now its spikes instead of constant and the spikes been generally much lower.

I will post back on how my steam downloads testing goes.

belt9

That's kind of the point of fq_codel, KISS. It is by design intended to be simple.

Now you might be trying to get it to do something it wasn't designed to do, in which case yes you will have to do some weird stuff - bit more likely you should just look elsewhere.

chrcoluk

I am a fan of simple, if steam works well in the current config then the current config stays, the weighting is a fallback plan if it doesnt work well.

From what I understand all the weighting is dummynet side, it simply dynamically adjusts the throughput allowance of each thread based on the weight assigned, by default everything has the same weight.

All fully documented on the dummynet man page, I dont think its a non supported feature.

belt9

Yeah man page is very helpful.

You should just be able to weight steam as you desire, apply the queue to a rule that catches ports and protocols for steam and let fq_codel do the rest.

I think you'll be happy with it. I just set it up and it's working very well for me.

It's awesome for weighting a guest net and primary net!

chrcoluk

I played some more.

First I misunderstood the man page, the weight flag does nothing on fq_codel, it only has an affect on another queuing type.

I tested steam and the result wasnt good, lots of packet loss during a steam download, the packet loss only goes close to 0% when the pipe size is below 40% of my line capacity, as I said steam is probably the most brutal traffic I have seen on my home connection.

HFSC can manage it at anything below 90%, however latency during saturation is vastly superior on fq_codel, packet loss is worse but latency better.

If I increase the queue slots to 500 (default 50), then packet loss almost stops at pipe size below 75%, with a small hit to latency.