Setting QoS markings on outbound packets to high priority [Ubuntu]

Stky10

I've got my ubuntu (10.04) laptop connected to a wireless router, which connects to the internet. My ISP (not Irish) is having problems so that every evening from about 8.30pm to 10pm the internet link is unusable due to approx 50% of packets getting dropped. I presume they've messed up their contention ratio as the bottleneck seems to be within the first 1-2 hops.

So I'm hoping that if I set outgoing packets to a high priority it might help me be someway productive during this time. I guess the QoS marking will either be ignored or remarked at some point in the ISP network, but if it helps get past the first few hops where the bottleneck seems to be, it might work. I've checked out the wireless router capability, but it doesn't have anything like this. So can this be done in Ubuntu easily?. I don't need anything too complicated because I'm not trying to increase the priority of a subset of traffic, I want to increase the priority of all traffic, even though 99% of it is just http.

NullZer0

Hi there,

You wont have any success in doing so.
Basically your service provider wil more than likely not be using QoS markings in the way your are talking above (at least not for residential customers).

Consider a case where they are using this... well, they should have a marking "turst point" for want of a better word. Basically anything that lands on device x with a marking should have its marking overwritten with a 0.

Back to the practical application though - you probably want to do this on a network device. Why? because you probably dont want to treat ALL traffic the same.

If your interested in some geeky learning on the subject though I would investigate RFC791 first of all and get a good understanding of the legacy IP Precedence up to DSCP and how markings have changed / can be more useful / granular. :-)

Stky10

I already know a fair deal about QoS, and I know that at best this will have a very limited effect as

- the QoS priority level will be remarked at some stage in the provider network, at the trust point as you state
- returned http traffic from a website wont have a high priority, so it will be likely to get caught up in the bottleneck

but some improvement is better than nothing, and I have no other option that I can see to try and improve performance.

As I stated already though, I can't do it on the wireless router, and thats the only network device between me and the ISP. Maybe I should try investigate if I can install ddwrt or openwrt on it, and do it that way.

NullZer0

tbh it wont make any difference at all - you can't control whats not on your network unless you have a specific agreement for someone else to honour your markings.

Stky10

Yes, but since they're offering multi service broadband to residential users (broadband, iptv, ip telephony), then they have to seperate and class the various types of traffic received, and they're either doing this by using some level of trust of QoS markings received, or else they have to do DPI on the packets and mark accordingly. DPI has its advantages and disadvantages so there remains some small possibility they're not using it.

Anyway since my wireless router doesn't support ddwrt, openwrt, or tomato, it looks the idea has hit a brick wall.

NullZer0

Wrong thread :-(