I have two LAN interfaces - Which one should I pick when I do traffic shaper?

torontob

Hi Everyone,

I have two LAN interfaces and one WAN interface on an Alix2D13 with pfSense v1.2.3. WAN interface is PPPoE and LAN-1 support 4 SIP phones and LAN-2 support a Linksys router which in turn proviedes DHCP to 3 computers.

Of course I want to prioritize at least (8x80kbps=320kbps) in upload and download to the 4 SIP phones. I use OpenVPN to connect the fourt SIP phones to an Asterisk sever over the internet.

I did a speed test and I have 2.5Mbps download and 600kbps upload.

When going through the Wizard it's asking me for LAN interface and I have LAN-1 and LAN-2. #1 is reponsible for SIP phones and #2 is responsible for the Linksys router which supports the computer. Which one should I pick?

I am not sure how this shaper really works. So, I am going blind. If someone can please shade some light on the way to get this right.

More importantly, I think my job would be much easier if I am able to restrict one single IP in my my LAN-2 to 2Mbps download and 350kbps upload in the QoS. Since my LAN-2 supplies only 1 IP to the Linksys router which supplies DHCP to 3 other computers then this method should work. But I don't know how solid and practical the idea is.

Thanks

dreamslacker

Wouldn't it be easier to use single LAN and hook up the router and phones via a dumb switch?
That way, you only have to deal with traffic shaping a single LAN (easy enough). After all, all 5 devices (4 phones & 1 router) should have statically assigned IPs.

Alternatively, simply configure the Linksys as an access point (presumably you need it for wireless) and hook up the LAN switch port to the pfsense LAN. The DHCP function can be activated on the pfsense to serve out addresses whilst the wireless on the Linksys is bridged to its LAN ports anyway. There's no reason why pfsense can't handle the traffic shaping for everything.

This is how I setup my home network:


Modem <-> (WAN) pfsense (LAN) <-> Switch <--> (LAN) Wireless router (LAN static IP; WAN unused)
                                          |-> Computers

torontob

Thanks for the feedback. That is how I have it setup as well, but I want to make sure that the Linksys wireless has limited bandwidth so that my other LAN port which supplies the phone switch gets the needed QoS.

I need to know how to limit the Linksys Wireless bandwidth or how to prioritize the phone switch bandwidth.

Thanks

dreamslacker

Don't cap the other bandwidth, set the Voip queue to have 320Kbps of realtime bandwidth.
i.e. 320Kbps is reserved for the Voip queue.
Since your phones should have static IPs, set their IPs into an alias and use a firewall rule to mask the source as the alias and pipe all the traffic into the Voip queue.

This is rudimentary, of course, since the 320Kbps is forever reserved for the voip purpose but tweaking for a more fair share is very heavily dependent on the specific traffic type you see on the network.

Example:
Assuming each voip packet is 1.6kb and you need 30ms max. for clear calls. This is for one way, you need another similar queue for the other direction.

qVoipUp & qVoipdown
realtime (m1 d m2): 6.4KbKb 30 160Kb
bandwidth (m1 d m2): 160Kb 100 160Kb

Assuming the phones are using 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.104 as their IPs:
Alias IPs 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.104 as 'voipips'

Set the firewall rules to:
voip outbound
Protocol: Any
Source port: ANY
Source IP: voipips
Dest. port: ANY
Dest. IP: ANY
Queue: qVoipUp

voip inbound
Protocol: Any
Source port: ANY
Source IP: ANY
Dest. port: ANY
Dest. IP: voipips
Queue: qVoipDown