Tip: Uploading hogging all the pipeline.

farss wrote on 5/1/2010, 5:37 PM
After almost a year of network / intenet problems I finally got my internal network running uber fast and reliably. Even joined the masses and WiFi'ed the wife. Yes, all secured and hidden.
All of that took using HP Procurve GigE switches and tossing my old router for an expensive MSB class Cisco unit.
One problem remained though. It kind of all worked too well on my cable connection. Uploading to YouTube etc pretty much killed anything else from accessing the web. Even though the web is mostly 'down' you still need to send some data 'up' and that's where the problem arises.
Sooo cFosSpeed to the rescue. I've only installed this on the old laptop I use for uploading and that could be a good thing. It does use a skinned widget which looks very cool as it graphs all the traffic etc but I could see it becoming a PIA if you used the same PC for other things. On the upside this is a pretty intelligent piece of code. It doesn't slow down uploads unless it sees the link performance is dropping from other traffic. A 30 day trial is available. The website is pretty scant on details and TBH I was pretty dubious about this product but figured I'd give it a go on the old laptop and it really does what they claim even though they fail to explain their product very well. Another nice feature is pay once and get free lifetime upgrades. At USD19.90 its pretty reasonably priced and the money does seem to go to a cottage industry.

Bob.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/2/2010, 5:07 AM
my router has that software built in, doesn't yours? It's called "QOS". That should do it.

But don't forget the best way to secure your router: limit by MAC addresses. Nobody can access my router unless they're an approved MAC address. Both WiFi & wired. If (for some reason) all my local machines die & once & I don't have anything that can access because of an unknown mac address I can reset the router.

farss wrote on 5/2/2010, 6:13 AM
"my router has that software built in, doesn't yours? It's called "QOS". That should do it."

Yes mine does and cos (??) but how to configure that ??
It seems to work fine, Skype etc runs fine during uploading so I think the router handles that automatically. Cisco's manuals don't give much away and as much as I'd like to do a Cisco course....

I did ask a bunch of network gurus and they all suggested getting cFosSpeed. The same company does another product that I think does what it does by configuring the router.

Bob.




TheHappyFriar wrote on 5/2/2010, 9:43 AM
I have a dlink router & it has an online help. Not sure if the terms are the same, I'll e-mail you the whole instructions, but to sum it up:
You specify the IP range on your network & the local range, the ports & the priority. so if you know youtube's ip range you can give it a lower priority for all devices on your network.

On a side note to add to what I posted about security, john meyer e-mail me some stuff about only using mac addresses. They can be bypassed too. In essence, if someone REALLY wants in your stuff they'll get in.
farss wrote on 5/2/2010, 1:55 PM
"so if you know youtube's ip range you can give it a lower priority for all devices on your network. "

Indeed and you can configure QoS based on application e.g. Skype.
The problem is when you have two PCs one uploading to and the other watching YouTube. What cFosSpeed does is to dynamically shape uplink and downlink speed for each PC running it based on link response time.

As for security. Well if you disable login from the WAN port that does make it hard. Also you can setup the router to send an email everytime something tries to login.

Bob.