I’m trying to find out if there’s an easy way to implement traffic shaping on my LAN, either through a consumer router or possibly a windows software app?
My local setup includes a desktop and laptop (both Win7), a bluray player w/ netflix and a popcornhour media box hooked up to the net via a 6meg DSL connection. Ideally, I’d like to have one my PCs download large files while I’m watching streaming video without putting up with constant pauses for video buffering.
To do this, I’d have to somehow prioritize the video streaming traffic over the PC download but I’m not sure how to go about doing this. My current dlink router has QOS but its options are minimal and seem to be geared specifically for online gaming traffic.
Is there a consumer router out there that will let me prioritize streaming on an app by app or local IP basis? Failing that, is there a windows util I could set up to accomplish the same thing?
If you have a router that supports DD-WRT, you’re golden. I just checked mine, and what you’re looking for is under NAT/QoS > QoS, click the Enable radio button, and then you can assign priorities to certain services, IPs, or MACs. I bought my router specifically because it’s one of the few whose manufacturer supports custom firmwares like DD-WRT (it is a Netgear WNR3550L), but DD-WRT supports a wide variety of routers, mostly those with Broadcom chipsets. Check the database on their site to see if they support your router.
If you can’t get a custom firmware on your router, and their stock firmware has QoS settings too rudimentary to use for your purposes, and you’re unwilling to buy a router than can support custom firmware, your only other option would be to throttle the machine actually doing the downloading. I have not had to do this from the client, rather than the router, but a quick Google search brings up some positive reviews of NetBalancer for this purpose. This is a less elegant solution, since it can be upset the instant you buy a new networked device, but it might suit your needs.
I have an Asus RT-N53 at home. It has rudimentary traffic shaping - you can set it to prioritize streaming video or gaming, but don’t expect true granular traffic shaping.
Something like this would likely fit the bill for you.