Advance QoS Settings explanation

[Diegotimmy]

Hi all

I have researched so much to find more information about using the Quality of Service Function of my new Wirelss Router/Modem: TP-Link TD-W8961ND

I think browsing through several forum posts along with a few cisco documents has given me a basic knowledge of how QOS works using DSCP or IPP technology, however for some reason I just cannot get the function working on my router.

I'm not sure if I am getting any settings wrong, or if its just broken router/firmware. I have been in touch with TP-Link support, but their support and knowledge so far has been limited.

Just to try and clear things up and to make sure my goals arent unrealistic (please correct me if they are)

1- I want to use QoS so everyone on my network can browse the internet, play games, watch youtube videos and place skype calls with no interruption.
2- I want to be able to run uTorrent with a low priority giving other traffic a high priority enabling me to use the internet uninterrupted without stopping my downloads.

My Settings:

For an example, I will use world of warcraft as my game I want to play as a high priority and uTorrent I want to take a low priority. Here are screenshots of world of warcraft running on Port 3724 and also screenshots of uTorrent which I have assigned port 61911 for outgoing connections and 44012 for incoming (listening connections).

Outgoing uTorrent port settings:


Incoming


World of Warcraft Settings:


And here is a screenshot of my resource network monitor showing the ports listed for uTorrent and world of warcraft.


Is there anyone out there with an advance knowledge of QOS who can push me in the right direction when it comes to what each setting means on my router qos page and which ones need to be enabled for it to work and which ones dont?

For instance, how do i know when to define a port as a destination port, or a source port? What kind of values do I want to be assigning applications and which technology would work better? (Ipp or DSCP)

What is the best way to test if its working or not? So far im taking notice of the latency of world of warcraft in comparison. There is no difference if QoS is on or Off.

Many thanks for anyone who can conjure a reply! Since knowledge of using QoS online seems to be limited to only those using custom router firmware.

 

[Cooky]

Sorry to disappoint you, but you won't be able to achieve what you desire w/o purchasing expensive equipment such as BlueCoat's PacketShaper.

Generally, DSCP & IPP are used to classify, and provide differential treatment to different types of traffic, within network segments that are within your control.
This means you can assign games, video, and VoIP to different queues w/ different bandwidth for OUTBOUND traffic towards Internet/ISP.
However, you have no control over how INBOUND traffic is queued on the circuit from ISP into your premises.
By the time your router receives the inbound traffic, packets have already been policed or dropped by the ISP equipment.

The QoS settings you see on your router can really only be used on LAN, if you have multiple segments, or outbound traffic towards the ISP.
To answer your other question, DSCP provides more granular control over IPP (6 bits vs 3 bits).

 

[Diegotimmy]

Sorry to disappoint you, but you won't be able to achieve what you desire w/o purchasing expensive equipment such as BlueCoat's PacketShaper.

Generally, DSCP & IPP are used to classify, and provide differential treatment to different types of traffic, within network segments that are within your control.
This means you can assign games, video, and VoIP to different queues w/ different bandwidth for OUTBOUND traffic towards Internet/ISP.
However, you have no control over how INBOUND traffic is queued on the circuit from ISP into your premises.
By the time your router receives the inbound traffic, packets have already been policed or dropped by the ISP equipment.

The QoS settings you see on your router can really only be used on LAN, if you have multiple segments, or outbound traffic towards the ISP.
To answer your other question, DSCP provides more granular control over IPP (6 bits vs 3 bits).

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Out of interest, if the QoS function of the router is advertised to reduce lag of online gaming(and this is taken directly from the product page on Tp-Links website) "The TD-W8961ND's built-in QoS engine provides various QoS policies that help prioritize Internet traffic to enable smooth IPTV streaming and lag-free online gaming." Why are they are advertising a function that simply cannot work for inbound traffic? Also, why do the configuration pages also have a section to enter inbound and outbound traffic ports/ipp's/mac addresses?

If what you say is indeed correct, surely this is false advertising?

I have seen guides online on how to set up QoS using DD-WRT or Tomato custom firmware, if these solutions work, why doesnt the QoS built in to my router?

Many thanks again.

 

[Cooky]

It's marketing.
Most vendors only advertise metrics that are results of extreme conditions, or tightly controlled lab environment.

I don't think QoS on DD-WRT or Tomato works the way you want it to, but you can give that a shot.
If it works please let me know what hardware platform & version of code were used, since one of the things I like about these forums is to learn from each other.

 

[Diegotimmy]

Sounds like it indeed, Its a function that is daunting task to measure. So many things come in to play when it comes to lag so its hard to test whether the QoS is working or not.

I believe each version of DD-WRT and Tomato have QoS support, there are guides online to set it up, but its very different from IPP/DSCP I have on my router. Instead they seem to have bandwith limiting according to port, mac or ip address and then a priority system on top of that.

Even if the router isnt capable of my goals, it would still be of interest to me to see if it could have an affect at all.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Even if the router isnt capable of my goals, it would still be of interest to me to see if it could have an affect at all.

It seems like your router supports DSCP and priority queuing.

Tagging packets with DCSP, by itself, doesn't provide anything to achieve QoS. DSCP simply provides a method of identifying packets that may require a specific level of service. No consumer ISP that I know of will use customer-tagged DSCP information for anything, so this feature is almost certainly useless in your environment.

Priority queues can help achieved a desired QoS, but in order for priority queues to be useful, your router needs to know the true speed of your Internet connection, and I didn't see any place to enter that information in your QoS rule. I'm assuming that you don't have a 100Mb/s connection to the Internet, so your CPE will be queuing/dropping packets in no particular order regardless of what you router is prioritizing.

In other words, your router's QoS settings are worthless 😛

 

[Diegotimmy]

It seems like your router supports DSCP and priority queuing.

Tagging packets with DCSP, by itself, doesn't provide anything to achieve QoS. DSCP simply provides a method of identifying packets that may require a specific level of service. No consumer ISP that I know of will use customer-tagged DSCP information for anything, so this feature is almost certainly useless in your environment.

Priority queues can help achieved a desired QoS, but in order for priority queues to be useful, your router needs to know the true speed of your Internet connection, and I didn't see any place to enter that information in your QoS rule. I'm assuming that you don't have a 100Mb/s connection to the Internet, so your CPE will be queuing/dropping packets in no particular order regardless of what you router is prioritizing.

In other words, your router's QoS settings are worthless 😛

I see, so if no ISP supports it, what exactly is the point of the feature? Its beginning to annoy me that its advertised as a feature when it has no affect at all.

 

[Emulex]

this would be easy to do with dual-wan - the problem is you can't slow down traffic and your form of broadband gets congested at 100% download speed. ie comcast can go balls out 42down 7 up and have spare bandwidth. my uverse when i hit 24 down or 3 up - the ping times start getting really nasty. I can't control my down when others are tossing utp packets my way but i can control my up.

with a dual wan scenario you could route traffic through a separate interface that wouldn't get congested.

or just get more bandwidth man. comcast with their 52.95 tier doesn't really suffer around here - maybe our node isn't busy but i see 42/7 all day long and my tier is way below that.

 

[theevilsharpie]

I see, so if no ISP supports it, what exactly is the point of the feature?

It's useful for privately-managed networks that need to maintain a specific level of service from endpoint-to-endpoint.

 

[Emulex]

ahh folks still use CIR? old frame relay days you'd get 128kbps CIR with T-1 possible max speed. God that sucked.

you can do dual wan many ways - i have an ISPOT - you could bridge your neighbors WLAN(with permission), 3G - so you can have a crude route to help with inbound QOS and also have auto-failover.

If you work from home you probably have more than 1 ISP in some capacity. I love my ole ISPOT - when the power goes out everyone moves to the laptops and keeps on trucking. Keep the kid on the ispot so they don't tear up all my bandwidth 🙂

 

[Diegotimmy]

this would be easy to do with dual-wan - the problem is you can't slow down traffic and your form of broadband gets congested at 100% download speed. ie comcast can go balls out 42down 7 up and have spare bandwidth. my uverse when i hit 24 down or 3 up - the ping times start getting really nasty. I can't control my down when others are tossing utp packets my way but i can control my up.

with a dual wan scenario you could route traffic through a separate interface that wouldn't get congested.

or just get more bandwidth man. comcast with their 52.95 tier doesn't really suffer around here - maybe our node isn't busy but i see 42/7 all day long and my tier is way below that.

I wish, our connection here is very slow. We live in rural England at the end of the telephone exchange. The exchange is only ADSL1 capable so we only have Adsl max with a sync speed of 1.5mb/256kb. I miss my old places connection of 24mbs and that was only ADSL 2. The idea being that my family get uninterrupted web browsing despite someone downloading/torrenting...looks like I may as well give up trying!

It's useful for privately-managed networks that need to maintain a specific level of service from endpoint-to-endpoint.

Would you say this is false advertising then? (From TP-Links Product Page)

The TD-W8961ND's built-in QoS engine provides various QoS policies that help prioritize Internet traffic to enable smooth IPTV streaming and lag-free online gaming. Thus users can experience the benefits of a smooth network connection without worrying about traffic congestion. Combined with IGMP multicast and IGMP snooping features the TD-W8961ND makes an ideal solution for multimedia applications.


It mentions it helps with congestion, but mine doesn't work at all. I cant see a difference. You seem to know a lot about the function, from the pictures, where am I going wrong?

ahh folks still use CIR? old frame relay days you'd get 128kbps CIR with T-1 possible max speed. God that sucked.

you can do dual wan many ways - i have an ISPOT - you could bridge your neighbors WLAN(with permission), 3G - so you can have a crude route to help with inbound QOS and also have auto-failover.

If you work from home you probably have more than 1 ISP in some capacity. I love my ole ISPOT - when the power goes out everyone moves to the laptops and keeps on trucking. Keep the kid on the ispot so they don't tear up all my bandwidth 🙂

Because of my slow connection, I made sure my ISP doesnt do anything like that, luckily enough they are a decent company with the customers interest in mind.
As for an extra connection, this isnt really an option, i don't pay for the internet and i know my parents wont pay for a second line/service. 3G isnt available here and the dongles are pricey here. I doubt our neighbors would be happy to share bridge their internet either (we are not too friendly)!

Perhaps I am just out of my depth with this router, I wonder if a high end router from Linksys or equivalent would act the same.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Would you say this is false advertising then? (From TP-Links Product Page)

The TD-W8961ND's built-in QoS engine provides various QoS policies that help prioritize Internet traffic to enable smooth IPTV streaming and lag-free online gaming. Thus users can experience the benefits of a smooth network connection without worrying about traffic congestion. Combined with IGMP multicast and IGMP snooping features the TD-W8961ND makes an ideal solution for multimedia applications.

I don't know if I'd necessarily call it 'false advertising,' because the router has the capability to perform the function that it advertises in certain situations.

It is overly optimistic, but then again, what advertising isn't 😛

It mentions it helps with congestion, but mine doesn't work at all. I cant see a difference. You seem to know a lot about the function, from the pictures, where am I going wrong?.

I have knowledge of the theory behind QoS operation, but I'm not familiar with the implementation of QoS tech on your particular router. I can tell you up front that adding DSCP or 802.1p tags will be of no use to you, but priority queuing may still work as long as you can give your router information about your available bandwidth. This could be configured in a different section of the router's settings. If all else fails, you can always ask the router manufacturer for assistance.

 

[freegeeks]

QoS in an end-to-end solution, your ISP doesn't care how you colour your traffic, it's all going to be treated as best effort. You can have however give priority in the outgoing direction so your skype traffic has priority over torrent for example. So what you want is actually achievable, it's not end-to-end qos but it is better then nothing

 

[Diegotimmy]

Yeah I understand now, thanks guys.

I contacted my ISP and they confirmed they dont relay DSCP or IPP markings, nor create them themselves apart from those used for VOIP (and for that service, you have to pay extra).

Im not sure what its worth, but they did say that its something they may look in to in the future, perhaps with IPV6 once thats started to be used.

I think I have configured my router correctly now, as you say freegeeks, I have had a bit of success limiting my upload traffic giving web browsing a bit better latency than usual, but in order to keep games playable whilst running torrents, I am still limiting my uTorrent download speed and upload speed. Well it seems theres a bit of improvement there but its not really useful.

Luckily uTorrent has a speed scheduler so i can limit speed accordingly.

Thanks for all your help.