[WXC/VFX] Bandwidth shaping possible with WAG310G?

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [WXC/VFX] Bandwidth shaping possible with WAG310G?

whizz

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#99296 16-Mar-2012 11:01

Hi guys,

we are going to have people stay over at our place for a while, so I wanted to setup a guest SSID which would allow them to connect to the internet but at crippled speed. Experience shows that some guests seem to think that watching Youtube all day long is ok.

So I started looking into bandwidth shaping and more often than not found the solution to be to get a second wireless router like the Linksys WRT54GL and put Tomato or DD WRT on it and configure the QoS.

But before I go out and get it I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, my WAG310G would allow me to do the same. So I set up the second SSID and went into the QoS settings.

I tried to configure queue management and an additional QoS rule, but frankly I have next to no idea what I am doing.

Also, I was hoping to limit the guest wifi permanently. But was told that QoS just manages the bandwidth when needed, i.e. if I were to be online at the same time as someone else on a lower priority.

Can someone please help a brother out?

Cheers

P.S.: I figured I'd ask here, as I am on the Xnet Fusion plan and therefore I am limited to my WAG310G as a base modem/router.

RunningMan

8953 posts

Uber Geek

#596106 16-Mar-2012 13:42

I don't have one to play with any more, but from memory, you could limit the transmit speed of the wifi - not sure if this was by SSID or not though.

Ragnor

8219 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#596152 16-Mar-2012 14:55

You'll want to control both data usage overall (since you're paying $1.28 per GB on Xnet) and activity that hogs the current available bandwidth.

What I would do if I was you is get a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND (~$120) and flash it with 3rd party open source firmware Gargoyle Router (based on OpenWRT)

TP-Link TL-WR1043ND
http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=529115

Gargoyle Router
http://www.gargoyle-router.com/index.php

Gargoyle Router gives you a good combination of features to keep things under control:
- Allow only certain devices to connect via MAC address
- Setup static DHCP so the same devices gets the same ip address
- Setup per ip address rate limits
- Setup per ip address data quotas
- Setup overall QoS so: general web/gaming > youtube > downloading

This means you can limit the guest via their ip address to say 20GB usage for the month but not apply any specific rate limits and use overall QoS to prioritise traffic.. or you can apply a quota AND rate limits to individual ip addresses AND/OR use overall QoS to prioritise traffic.

Per ip address quotas/rate limits in Gargoyle Router
http://www.gargoyle-router.com/wiki/lib/exe/detail.php?id=screenshots&media=screenshots:14_quotas.jpg

QoS in Gargoyle Router
http://www.gargoyle-router.com/wiki/lib/exe/detail.php?id=screenshots&media=screenshots:16_qos_2.jpg

Also since you would be setting up the TP Link behind the existing WAG310G you could continue to use the WAG310G directly yourself and have the guests connect via the TP Link only, they will be behind double NAT which will hamper any uploading via torrents etc.

Ragnor

8219 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#596160 16-Mar-2012 15:20

If you are not comfortable with flashing firmware and what not there are some more expensive "premade" options like, but these are more geared to selling internet access...

http://www.zenbu.net.nz/

http://www.webgauge.co.nz/

http://www.tomizone.com/

whizz

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#596225 16-Mar-2012 17:56

I gotta say that Gargoyle Router is a very awesome solution. But before I go out and spend an extra $100 on top of my already way too expensive WAG310G, I was hoping that the QoS (or any other hidden option) would do the trick for me. I suppose I understood QoS wrong from the get-go.

Ragnor

8219 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#596295 16-Mar-2012 20:56

whizz: I gotta say that Gargoyle Router is a very awesome solution. But before I go out and spend an extra $100 on top of my already way too expensive WAG310G, I was hoping that the QoS (or any other hidden option) would do the trick for me. I suppose I understood QoS wrong from the get-go.

QoS is about the priority of different types of traffic when consuming the available bandwidth. Say you have a 10Mbit line rate (pretty common now), one guy downloading or torrenting can consume the entire line rate by itself crowding out and delaying other traffic.

Normally use you QoS to classify certain traffic into a "class" then you give that class a higher priority system eg: voip > gaming > web/email > youtube > downloads ... and maybe some rate limits eg: anything classified as downloads can't use more than 100KB/s.

The WAG310G has some basic QoS features and does have static dhcp by mac address options, so you could set it up to always give everything the same ip addresses then give your ip address priority over the guests ip addreses.

However the problem for you (imo) is that you're paying per GB for traffic, even a slow rate a guest could use a lot of data... eg: leave a download going at 100KB/s all night and it adds up.

You need QoS + a quota system that knows about the amount of data used so the guests can't cost you onerous amounts of $$$.

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#596309 16-Mar-2012 21:47

For hotspot and user control you simply can't beat a Mikrotik device - even DD-WRT doesn't come anywhere close. The problem is there is a steep learning curve and reastically a good year or so of using the hardware and software on a daily basis before you can really say you understand how it works!

whizz

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#599972 26-Mar-2012 00:19

Alrighty,

I managed to track down a Linksys WRT54GL, flashed it with the latest version of Gargoyle and everything works. But I could use your help for the next step.

I connected the WRT54GL to my WAG310 -> cable goes from port 01 (WAG310) into WAN (WRT54GL)

I just can't get any internet connection. I tried via DHCP and I tried via static IP, but I am just a sack of fail. What am I doing wrong?

Cheerio

Equinox IT

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.

RunningMan

8953 posts

Uber Geek

#600058 26-Mar-2012 09:35

I assume this is a double NAT setup.

If you plug directly in to the WAG310, does that work OK?

If so, plug in the WRT, and from the WAG, you should see that picking up an IP address - if not, look at the WRT config for how it obtains an IP.

If the WRT is picking up an address, disable all your firewall rules etc on it, and see if the traffic gets through then.

Ragnor

8219 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#600226 26-Mar-2012 13:17

Yes it will be double NAT as the WAG310 doesn't have a PPPoA half bridge or PPPoA to PPPoE relay feature. However, since it's just for guests getting rid of double NAT is not essential. Double NAT mostly affects gamers and p2p file sharing.

It's probably an ip address range conflict where both devices are trying to use the range 192.168.1.x.

Try give the WRT54GL a different range for it's LAN, eg:

WAG310:
- Lan IP Address: 192.168.1.1 (this is the default I think)
- LAN DHCP Range: 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.100

WRT54GL
- WAN: Obtain automatically via DHCP
- Lan IP Address: 10.0.0.1
- LAN DHCP Range: 10.0.0.2 to 10.0.0.100

If that doesn't work post a tracert when plugged into the WRT54GL, eg:
- windows key + r (opens run window)
- type in: cmd
- hit ok
- type in: tracert www.geekzone.co.nz
- hit enter

whizz

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#600481 26-Mar-2012 21:12

Thanks for getting back to me so quick!!! I won't have the time to try it out tonight (hopefully tomorrow). But will keep you informed of either success or failure.

whizz

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#602447 30-Mar-2012 12:47

Dammit, I replied yesterday and it's not even here.

Anyhow, thanks everyone and especially Ragnor. I used your exact setup and it works perfectly.

One final question though ... just for the heck of it, I connected the WRT54GL via static IP instead of DHCP, but it didn't work. These were my settings:

IP: 192.168.1.10
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.1

What's the mistake?

Ragnor

8219 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#603017 31-Mar-2012 19:42

whizz: Dammit, I replied yesterday and it's not even here.

Anyhow, thanks everyone and especially Ragnor. I used your exact setup and it works perfectly.

One final question though ... just for the heck of it, I connected the WRT54GL via static IP instead of DHCP, but it didn't work. These were my settings:

IP: 192.168.1.10
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.1

What's the mistake?

It possible that if you statically assign an ip address that's in the dhcp range of the WAG310 it will ignore traffic from the ip address because as far as it knows it didn't give out that address yet.