Prioritizing traffic: Possible?

I'm not sure if I can do something in the following situation:

|Our network| |Other Network|
| |
|Linux router|---|RouterX|---<Slow Connection>---|RouterY|

Our network is connection to another network via a very slow 64kbit
connection. The last router I have access to is the Linux router,
everything else, including RouterX and Y are not accessible. Users are
complaining about very slow connections espescially when someone
starts a large file up- or download.

In terms of configuration I know how I can prioritizing certain
traffic to improve response time. My question is: Can I do something
even if I don't sit at the bottleneck? As my router is connected to
both sides with 100Mbit, it should be difficult to prioritize traffic,
or am I wrong?

On 2004-04-29, Nicolas Keller <nicolas.keller@slb.de> wrote:
>
> [snipped]
>
> In terms of configuration I know how I can prioritizing certain
> traffic to improve response time. My question is: Can I do something
> even if I don't sit at the bottleneck? As my router is connected to
> both sides with 100Mbit, it should be difficult to prioritize traffic,
> or am I wrong?
>
The keywords you are looking for is "scheduling", "Quality of Service (QoS)"
and Google.

http://www.lartc.org/

http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.qdisc.html

these should start you off.

Cheers

Alex

nicolas.keller@slb.de (Nicolas Keller) wrote in message news:<11b2268.0404290636.4dca9464@posting.google.c om>...
> I'm not sure if I can do something in the following situation:
>
> |Our network| |Other Network|
> | |
> |Linux router|---|RouterX|---<Slow Connection>---|RouterY|
>
> Our network is connection to another network via a very slow 64kbit
> connection. The last router I have access to is the Linux router,
> everything else, including RouterX and Y are not accessible. Users are
> complaining about very slow connections espescially when someone
> starts a large file up- or download.
>
> In terms of configuration I know how I can prioritizing certain
> traffic to improve response time. My question is: Can I do something
> even if I don't sit at the bottleneck? As my router is connected to
> both sides with 100Mbit, it should be difficult to prioritize traffic,
> or am I wrong?

As A.C. noted, you can do this ... but ...
What's the point?

Nothing you do will address your main problem -- inadequate bandwidth.
Do you really want to go into the business of deciding who/what gets
how much of the measly 64K?

If you mus,t you could rate limit certain kinds/sources of traffic,
but you only want to do this for traffic crossing the 64K link -- not
local traffic. This will be tricky.

Besides the lartc howto I would suggest ( just to get started! ):-(
Guide to IP Layer Network Administration with Linux
http://linux-ip.net/
and
IP Command Reference
http://linux-ip.net/gl/ip-cref/

It will be more fun to have bake sales to pay for a faster link than
the work you'll do making some people even more unhappy to get a few,
short lived grins from those that benefit from all your work. my2c's

hth,
prg
email above disabled

Alexander Clouter <alex@digriz.junk-this.org.uk> wrote in message news:<gdrr6c.129.ln@penfold.digriz.org.uk>...
> The keywords you are looking for is "scheduling", "Quality of Service (QoS)"
> and Google.
>
> http://www.lartc.org/
>
> http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.qdisc.html
>
> these should start you off.
>

# tc qdisc add dev ppp0 root tbf rate 220kbit latency 50ms burst 1540

Ok, why is this useful? If you have a networking device with a large
queue, like a DSL modem or a cable modem, and you talk to it over a
fast device, like over an ethernet interface, you will find that
uploading absolutely destroys interactivity.

You saved my day, thank you very much Alexander! I will keep on
reading :)

-- Nicolas