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I have a 2Wire 2701HG-D router hardwired to my home office computer. All the other computers in the house use that same router wirelessly. My computer is used for time critical time sensitive stock trading, mostly with thinkorswim, while the others in the house are used for non-critical entertainment like youtube and netflix and such. All of the computers in the house including mine run 32 bit XP. My download speeds are only 2.6 mBPS through Qwest here in this small town. I would like to make my computer a master computer in terms of bandwidth priority such that my when my computer is actively downloading or uploading the other computers get no bandwidth at all and my computer gets it all until it is done. I would like this to happen automatically so that bandwidth is not throttled on all the other computers unless my computer is using the internet. My goal is to create something analogous to how the slave disks on an IDE cable can't I/O while the master disk is doing so. I can buy a second router and run two if necessary. I have heard the terms master and slave used for routers but my understanding is that that refers to repeaters to extend signal area rather than priority. Does anyone know how to accomplish automatic selective throttling within a home network? If all the computers in the house ran the same firewall software, is there a firewall that could talk to all the other firewalls to accomplish this selective throttling? Thanks

Most modern routers have a function called QoS (Quality of Service) which does exactly what you are looking for.

Thanks JJCDAD. I am now here:

http://192.168.0.1/xslt?PAGE=E_3_0

but I am confused as to how I prioritize computers rather than type of traffic.

taymere wrote:

Thanks JJCDAD. I am now here:

http://192.168.0.1/xslt?PAGE=E_3_0

but I am confused as to how I prioritize computers rather than type of traffic.

You'll need to upload a screenshot to the picture dump of your choice, or to your ISP web account. 192.168.x.x is a bogon prefix and will only route locally.

My router allows prioritization by MAC address and/or Ethernet port as well as service type. You could use the MAC address or Ethernet port options to accomplish your goal. But I can't seem to find any good documentation on 2wire routers. Not sure what options they have.

Thanks. I took screen shots, no how do I upload them? I see an "Img" button, does it have to do with that?

Here are links to the screenshots Captain Ned:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20492124@N04/4797816872/

and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20492124@N04/4797816878/

Those medium resolution screenshots from my previous post aren't very readable, sorry. Here are the same screenshots in full resolution.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20492124@N04/4797845364/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20492124@N04/4797845370/

I found some documentation on the Qwest site, and it DOES NOT look like your router (gateway) has the ability to do QoS functions.

So I think the only way to accomplish your goal is to add a "real" router to your setup.

Hi JJCDAD, do the screenshots I took look like they are set up to accept IP address prioritization? If not, what router do you recommend then? Have you seen any deals on newegg or elsewhere? Thanks

Looks like you can use either a destination port number or a destination IP address. From this I think you can make several rules that would cover you.

Basically give high priority to ports 7001, 7002, 5555, 5556 and IP address 207.33.55.212. The port 80 is the standard port for web access so giving high priority to that probably wouldn't help you too much.

Thanks a ton redeye, I printed out the pdf and the thinkorswim activity based QoS settings you describe look like they will work on my router. I'll try it today.

I checked with thinkorswim tech support today and the port numbers used by thinkorswim desktop are the same ports used by the thinkpipes institutional trading software as described in the link redeye provided below:
http://mediaserver.thinkorswim.com/thin ... n/ncis.pdf

I'll get 4 other computers in the house running running netfix "watch instantly" while also simultaneously running a few youtube and hulu videos while I use thinkorswim on mine today to test the change out.

I tested and it turns out that I got no speed advantage from configuring QoS. It still took roughly twice as long to download charts when other computers are using netflix and youtube as it did when only my computer was downloading. I called thinkorswim again and they gave me different ports and IP addresses and this time they said that thinkorswim uses different ports than thinkpipes. They gave me IP adresses 192.168.212.69, 63.209.8.40, 38.103.97.149, and ports 7001, 7002, 443, 554, 1127. I reconfigured with these settings, using 255.255.255.0 as the destination netmasks to no avail. It performed exactly the same, slow.

Is the problem that my router isn't set up to configure QoS by device name within my home network? This is an important question because I would like to know for sure that it will help before I buy a new router. What router would allow me to give higher QOS to specific devices on my home network?

If they are telling you that they are using IP address 192.168.212.69 then hang up on them and try and find someone who has a clue. That address is from the private address ranges and unroutable on the Internet. Probably the best way of finding out what that software is doing would be to sniff the traffic and take a note of the IP addresses and ports.

I do remember seeing articles about some ISPs have huge queues on their equipment. This can make setting QoS policies tricky, you need to try to get the other services to send to you at less than your download rate by controlling your upload rate of ACKs.

The other thing to keep in mind is QoS is only fully respected on your network. Once your traffic leaves your router to your ISP it is routed based on their rules. This means QoS is only really useful for home use when it comes to uploads. When it comes to data being downloaded from your ISP you are at the mercy of when the packets arrive from the them.

ekul wrote:

When it comes to data being downloaded from your ISP you are at the mercy of when the packets arrive from the them.

Yes and no -- see the last bit of notfred's post. There are ways to throttle applications which compete for download bandwidth. It is just a matter of how much time and/or money you're willing to spend on getting it set up.

Thetre is a very simple and obvious way to get exactly what you want. Tho it will cost somewhat more.

Get a second line.

just brew it! wrote:

ekul wrote:

When it comes to data being downloaded from your ISP you are at the mercy of when the packets arrive from the them.

Yes and no -- see the last bit of notfred's post. There are ways to throttle applications which compete for download bandwidth. It is just a matter of how much time and/or money you're willing to spend on getting it set up.

notfred wrote:

I do remember seeing articles about some ISPs have huge queues on their equipment. This can make setting QoS policies tricky, you need to try to get the other services to send to you at less than your download rate by controlling your upload rate of ACKs.

Since the OP doesn't have a good understanding of IP networking, I just can't see an effective solution based around this being built. Maybe if he gets a tech in to set it all up for him, but even then, I don't think it'll get the performance that he's looking for. I have to agree that a second line is probably the best option in this case.