How good is QoS for home connections? What can I expect?
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I'm running pfSense for my home internet connection (it's a business internet account, but that doesn't provide me anything special) and I'd like to start using VOIP but I'm often downloading or playing games (on the internet), etc.
Right now if I want to play a game I manually stop all downloads, etc.
However, if I start using VOIP I need to make sure it always works and if my wife wants to make a phone call it won't matter what else is happening on the network.
I also don't want to limit or cap my bandwidth (i.e. a lot of QoS algorithms seem to make you limit your bandwidth to 90% to allow for QoS to work properly).
Can anybody give me any advice on this? What can I realistically expect with pfSense + QoS and VOIP?
EDIT: What concerns me is that I can only prioritize the packets I'm sending to my ISP. I can't prioritize the incoming packets (i.e. if I'm downloading at full speed while trying to make a VOIP call, etc)
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I'm running pfSense for my home internet connection (it's a business internet account, but that doesn't provide me anything special) and I'd like to start using VOIP but I'm often downloading or playing games (on the internet), etc.
Right now if I want to play a game I manually stop all downloads, etc.
However, if I start using VOIP I need to make sure it always works and if my wife wants to make a phone call it won't matter what else is happening on the network.
I also don't want to limit or cap my bandwidth (i.e. a lot of QoS algorithms seem to make you limit your bandwidth to 90% to allow for QoS to work properly).
Can anybody give me any advice on this? What can I realistically expect with pfSense + QoS and VOIP?
EDIT: What concerns me is that I can only prioritize the packets I'm sending to my ISP. I can't prioritize the incoming packets (i.e. if I'm downloading at full speed while trying to make a VOIP call, etc)
I think you'll have to just dedicate a small portion of your bandwidth to guarantee VOIP. If you set aside say 128Kbps for the phone. The bandwidth required for VOIP is low, so you're not really losing much.
QoS unfortunately will not work if you specify a bandwidth out of your reach. You can run some bandwidth test on your ISP to make sure the real cap then do QoS at 97% of what you measure. Depending on your connection, I don't think you're losing much (5% maybe?).
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EDIT: What concerns me is that I can only prioritize the packets I'm sending to my ISP. I can't prioritize the incoming packets (i.e. if I'm downloading at full speed while trying to make a VOIP call, etc)
The shaper does prioritize incoming packets too. It's true that particular packet has already used your Internet bandwidth at that point, but TCP's congestion control will kick in and quickly slow the download as needed by queuing once it gets to you.