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    BITS or BYTES

    Traffic Shaping
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    • W
      wormuths last edited by

      I was looking to get more into the traffic shaping aspects of PFSense. When I run through the wizard, I notice it keeps looking for "Mbits/s", and I'm wondering if I'm misinterpreting this?

      WAN.png

      So if my internet speed is 200 "Mbps" down and 10 "Mbps" up, and I get this screen and enter 200 for the download, I'm really telling it 200 "Mbits" which is really "25 MB"? Everything is this way.

      For example, VOIP...

      VOIP.png

      So if I want to dedicate 1 MB which should be ample for 10 100K voice streams, then I shouldn't add "1" in the "Mbits/s" field, but rather "8 Mbit/s"?

      Am I misunderstanding this, or is everything really in BITS instead of BYTES? If so, I'm curious as to why since most people think of their speeds in terms of MB?

      bingo600 S 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • bingo600
        bingo600 LAYER 8 @wormuths last edited by bingo600

        @wormuths
        Communication line speed is normally specified in bits/s
        Prob. inherited from "Old serial comms ... Ie. 9600,N,8;1"

        I have never seen a Ie. a xDSL line specified in B/s , only in b/s
        Ie. 10Mb/s up , and 100Mb/s down.

        Also a for voice codec bw. are specified in b/s Ie. ALAW is 64Kb/s.

        I think that specifying any bw related info in b/s feels natural to me.

        /Bingo

        If you find my answer useful - Please give the post a šŸ‘ - "thumbs up"

        pfSense+ 22.05 (ZFS)

        QOTOM-Q355G4 Quad Lan.
        CPUĀ  : Core i5 5250U, Ram : 8GB Kingston DDR3LV 1600
        LANĀ  : 4 x Intel 211, DiskĀ  : 250G EVO870 Sata SSD

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        • S
          SteveITS @wormuths last edited by

          @wormuths said in BITS or BYTES:

          should be ample for 10 100K voice streams

          re: this comment, I'd make sure it is set higher than the expected maximum usage.

          Steve

          Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. If yours is older, select it in System/Update/Update Settings.
          When upgrading, let it finish. Allow 10 minutes, or more depending on packages and device speed.

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          • W
            wormuths last edited by

            @bingo600 Thanks for the information…

            The abbreviations are still a little confusing for us home users who’ve been conditioned to think of their available speeds in terms of how many megabytes the speed test shows.

            So if I want to specify 1 megabyte to the VOIP shaping, for PFSense I have to convert it megabits? Same for the maximum speed of the WAN?

            I.e…

            WAN is 200/10 Mbps, so I would enter 1600/80 Mbits/s in PFSense as my speeds on WAN?

            VOIP requires 1 Mbps, so enter 8 Mbits/s in PFSense?

            Just want to be clear…

            Thanks!

            S bingo600 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • S
              SteveITS @wormuths last edited by

              @wormuths said in BITS or BYTES:

              WAN is 200/10 Mbps

              That is megabits. MBps with a capital B would indicate bytes. Sorry to slow you down. :)

              Steve

              Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. If yours is older, select it in System/Update/Update Settings.
              When upgrading, let it finish. Allow 10 minutes, or more depending on packages and device speed.

              W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • bingo600
                bingo600 LAYER 8 @wormuths last edited by

                @wormuths

                As @SteveITS mentioned

                Mb because the b is lowercase mean Megabit.
                MB because the B is uppercase/Capital mean MegaByte.

                1MB = 8Mb

                But how come you are so interested in specify the bw. in MegaBytes ?

                /Bingo

                If you find my answer useful - Please give the post a šŸ‘ - "thumbs up"

                pfSense+ 22.05 (ZFS)

                QOTOM-Q355G4 Quad Lan.
                CPUĀ  : Core i5 5250U, Ram : 8GB Kingston DDR3LV 1600
                LANĀ  : 4 x Intel 211, DiskĀ  : 250G EVO870 Sata SSD

                W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • W
                  wormuths @bingo600 last edited by

                  @bingo600

                  I’m not worried about specifying it that way. I just wanted to be sure I entered it correctly. I can do the conversion and enter it in Mbits, I just wanted to be sure that is what PFSense was expecting.

                  My motivation is that I want to do more tinkering with traffic shaping, and I’m looking to learn a thing or two along the way. I know I can use the wizard to get the basics running, but I want to get more involved in making it customized for my specific situation.

                  I just wanted to get the measurements straight in my head.

                  Thanks!

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • W
                    wormuths @SteveITS last edited by

                    @steveits

                    Yeah, I see…. LOL

                    I guess I always confused the capital MB vs Mb as being the same thing. Thankfully, I paid enough attention to notice before I made the wife upset when things stopped working.

                    I always say, I know just enough to blow myself up. šŸ˜‚

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