Using Limiters and PRIQ simultaneously
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Wasn't able to find a clear answer, so thought I'd ask.
My scenario is that I have a lot of VOIP / realtime video traffic I have to establish good QoS for. HFSC has been challenging to implement to say the least, so I've started looking for an alternative method.
My goal is for any type of traffic, regardless of importance, to be able to use as much bandwidth as it wants unless higher priority traffic needs it. I also need to give minimum bandwidth guarantees (thus initially my foray into HFSC) to VOIP and realtime traffic to ensure good quality for phone calls and video conferencing even when links are busy.
PRIQ initially seemed like a simpler but less optimal choice. If too many people are using video at the same time, it could choke out everything else, which is not desirable.
I considered an alternative that may be a lot simpler to manage if it works together. If I accept an upper limit on VOIP and video traffic, could I use a limiter in conjunction with PRIQ? Example, one location has a 100mbps connection. Let's say I'm willing to allow up to 75mbps to go towards video and VOIP.
So, I set up a limiter only for VOIP and video and set it to 75mbps. VOIP and video traffic is marked appropriately by firewall rules. At the same time, I use PRIQ and give VOIP and video the highest priority, followed by tcp ack traffic, followed by applications we use for business, followed by everything else that drops into the default queue.
In other words, will this create a scenario where VOIP and video media will get highest priority via PRIQ, but the 75mbps limiter would prevent VOIP and video from crowding out all other traffic? Obviously there will be an expectation within this location that there is a limit to how many video and audio streams you can be running at once and that exceeding the limit will create quality issues.
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For posterity, we did get this working, so the short answer is, yes, you can do that and it appears to work as expected.
We ultimately ended up going with HFSC instead, just because it's a better algorithm and manages the traffic better.
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Does anyone else have any view on using both altq and limiters. I tried it worked for a while, seemingly, then the routing got blocked. I can’t quite understand why but it now seems like you can’t use both at the same time.