Bandwidth control

In my search to control bandwidth on my network I found 2 projects..

1. TC
2. BWM Tools - http://freshmeat.net/projects/bwmtools/

This brings me to 2 questions...

Firstly, can TC control bandwidth in both directions? I read that it
can only do 1 direction, which one I cant remember. Can you monitor
the load on the queues you define? Does TC support IPv6?

Secondly, BWM Tools seems to queue traffic to userspace and use some
kind of kernel module to allow it through or not. How efficient is
bandwidth control using ip queing to userspace? BWM Tools doesn't seem
to support IPv6 :(

If anyone else knows of a way I can shape traffic, please let me know.
Regards
Johan

Hi Johan,

aapman@gmail.com wrote:
> In my search to control bandwidth on my network I found 2 projects..
>
> 1. TC
> 2. BWM Tools - http://freshmeat.net/projects/bwmtools/
>
> This brings me to 2 questions...
>
> Firstly, can TC control bandwidth in both directions? I read that it
> can only do 1 direction, which one I cant remember. Can you monitor
> the load on the queues you define? Does TC support IPv6?
>

TC can only do 1 direction, outgoing, unless of course you create a
dummy interface. You can also throw 2 network cards into your router (if
this is the case) and limit outgoing on both the interfaces... this
unfortunitly turns out to be a bit messy.

Not sure if it supports IPv6.

> Secondly, BWM Tools seems to queue traffic to userspace and use some
> kind of kernel module to allow it through or not.

correct

> How efficient is bandwidth control using ip queing to userspace?

On a celeron 1.8 i get 5,500 packets per second at 1500 size with full
duplex 100Mbit without any shaping rules. Which i think works out to 66Mbit.

> BWM Tools doesn't seem to support IPv6 :(

not at present.

Regards
Nigel Kukard
Author: BWM Tools

>
> Regards
> Johan
>

aapman@gmail.com wrote:
> In my search to control bandwidth on my network I found 2 projects..
>
> 1. TC
> 2. BWM Tools - http://freshmeat.net/projects/bwmtools/
>
> This brings me to 2 questions...
>
> Firstly, can TC control bandwidth in both directions? I read that it
> can only do 1 direction, which one I cant remember. Can you monitor
> the load on the queues you define? Does TC support IPv6?

More than one question. Bzzzzztttt! You lose ;-)

1) Outgoing only, but with two nics (it's meant for use on a router
after all) that is just a matter of picking the right nic. Never the
left one.

2) Can't remember which one(s) of the graphing monitors do and there
are perf monitors that will do this (both IIRC). Probably not an extra
continuous load you want to put on the machine.

3) If you're even thinking of TC, you might as well go directly to:
http://lartc.org/howto/index.html
where you will find many answers, like:
http://lartc.org/howto/lartc.adv-filter.ipv6.html
That's LARTC -- Linux Advanced Routing and ... Traffic Control. It's
in tldp, which every Linuxer should own :)

> Secondly, BWM Tools seems to queue traffic to userspace and use some
> kind of kernel module to allow it through or not. How efficient is
> bandwidth control using ip queing to userspace? BWM Tools doesn't
seem
> to support IPv6 :(

Think you have the definitive answer to this one from him who knows
best.

> If anyone else knows of a way I can shape traffic, please let me
know.
> Regards
> Johan

Incoming traffic _can't_be_shaped_ -- it has to enter the machine
_before_ you can do _anything_ with it. No telepathic nics on the
market yet. Incoming traffic is _policed_ (to be anal about it) with
netfilter/iptables rules. Eg., limit module and limit-burst.

Your incoming traffic is outgoing traffic on the device just upstream
-- ie., that's where traffic _shaping_ would take place.

There has been an ongoing project re: IPv6 support for some time and it
appears it will be rolled into the kernel (fully?) in the (near +-)
future. You can get some sense of it here:
http://www.linux-ipv6.org/

While on the subject of links, try any/all of these:

http://linux-ip.net/html/
http://www.policyrouting.org/PolicyR...NLINE/TOC.html
http://www.docum.org/docum.org/docs/
http://www.opalsoft.net/qos/DS-23.htm
and there is always google ;-)


hth,
prg
email above disabled

prg wrote:

>
> Incoming traffic _can't_be_shaped_ -- it has to enter the machine
> _before_ you can do _anything_ with it.

It can "sort of" if you accept sacrificing some bandwidth - not perfectly
WRT latency, but alot better than doing nothing :-)

Of course it depends on what the OP means by traffic shaping and I am
assuming we are talking about trying to shape a bottleneck link from the
wrong end and there is a buffer on the other end.

No telepathic nics on the
> market yet. Incoming traffic is _policed_ (to be anal about it) with
> netfilter/iptables rules.

Linux policers don't need netfilter

> Eg., limit module and limit-burst.

>
> Your incoming traffic is outgoing traffic on the device just upstream

Yep - that's where to put the queues - if you need to shape inbound traffic
to the shaping box its self use IMQ and put queues on that.

Andy.

There is also another one:

http://sp9wun.republika.pl/index_en.html

very nice advanced shaper which allows to control bandwith per user in
upload and download direciton. It also creates netfilter rules which
help to expose bandwith usage graphs (per user) with lstatd. Easy.

Rafal

cserf@poczta.onet.pl wrote:
> There is also another one:
>
> http://sp9wun.republika.pl/index_en.html
>
> very nice advanced shaper which allows to control bandwith per user in
> upload and download direciton. It also creates netfilter rules which
> help to expose bandwith usage graphs (per user) with lstatd. Easy.
>
> Rafal

Great!

I am trying it out as we speak.. Having trouble though - complains about
my unknown firewall (don't have one, running SuSe 9.2) .. Any Ideas?

Cool! Any other pointers... how do I set up the lstatd stuff? Hmm.. I'll
check out the debian examples, I see packages.debian.org has a shaperd
package.. I presume it's the same?

Thanks!

Użytkownik Coenraad Loubser napisał:
> cserf@poczta.onet.pl wrote:
>
>> There is also another one:
>>
>> http://sp9wun.republika.pl/index_en.html
>>
>> very nice advanced shaper which allows to control bandwith per user in
>> upload and download direciton. It also creates netfilter rules which
>> help to expose bandwith usage graphs (per user) with lstatd. Easy.
>>
>> Rafal
>
>
> Great!
>
> I am trying it out as we speak.. Having trouble though - complains about
> my unknown firewall (don't have one, running SuSe 9.2) .. Any Ideas?
>
You are supposed to have iptables or ipchains installed ( recomended
iptables) You need it also for graph making.
In case you already have iptables and you still have the same problem
then check in shaper.cfg whether you gave your firewall directory

> Cool! Any other pointers... how do I set up the lstatd stuff?
(from docs)
download:
show_filters | grep shaper | awk '{print $1,$11}'
upload:
show_filters | grep shaout | awk '{print $1,$10}'
and put them to lstat

Hmm.. I'll
> check out the debian examples, I see packages.debian.org has a shaperd
> package.. I presume it's the same?
probably yes, I use PLD and it is the same.

Rafal