I have a question regarding the queuing on Mikrotik RB. When connecting a number of user to a network using a Mikrotik RB as the default gateway and one of the users is downloading updates or drivers the PC will consume all of the available bandwidth on the network.
So lets says the client is setup with a PPPoE account and that account is limited to 2MB the client workstation will consume the whole 2MB slowing the connection down for all user.
This does not seems to be the case with a ADSL Router. The ADSL router (NETGEAR) will distribute the bandwidth or limit the bandwidth to all users to compensate this effect.
We have a number of RB installed and experience this on all configuration. Please advise if this is a normal and if any special queues need to be created to limit this effect.
Surely you would not need to create queue for each user using the connection and limit them to lest say 64kb to accommodate all users effectively.
Please advise on the matter and if anyone else is experiencing this. I take it more configuration is needed but need some advise and explanation on why this is happening will be appreciated.
To distribute bandwith on a fair basis amongst all users, you could use either a simple queue with PCQ, or a better method, setup QoS dividing traffic into categories then use PCQ on specific traffic child queues, http, http-download, etc.
Mikrotik motto is “use your mind”, in the sense they provide the ingredients and tools, then you “cook” a recipe to your liking. there is no “automatic” or precooked way of fimplementing it on RouterOS.
See http://mum.mikrotik.com/presentations/CZ09/QoS_Megis.pdf I think it will be of your interest, it tackles how to limit and and the sime time share bandwidth across all users. It is based on ROS v5 and things have changed on ROS v6, but it will be useful anyway to understand the “whole picture”.
Search on http://mum.mikrotik.com/agenda.php?lang=EN for more QoS presentations.
See http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Queues_-_PCQ_Examples for a simple queues example.
what is your total bandwidth? What bandwidth is sold to customers?
Thanks for your response. I will have a look at the material you posted.
We currently have a 15MB Fiber connection with clients connecting via wireless or cable. There is queues configured on our main cloud core router that manage the bandwidth that’s integrated with a RADIUS server. This is currently managed by our upstream provider.
The issue is with clients authenticating on a 2MB package and users inside that network abusing the connection and slowing down all users within in the 2MB limit assigned to them.
If that makes sense. So I basically need to eliminate one user downloading or using youtube slowing down the experience for all other users.
Your total bandwidth vs each customer plan bandwidth ratio is rather unbalanced…
To cope with that you’ll need to setup QoS at your PE, a mangle/Queue tree approach, with two master queues (download/upload) with each having child queues for different kinds of traffic, then assigning different priorities for each child queue e.g.
Essential (ping, dns) pri 1
VoIP pri 2
Gaming pri 3
HTTP pri 4
HTTP-downloads, youtube, etc 5
Email 6
Rest 7
P2P 8
With this you can assign a minimum percentaje of bandwidth for each queue (Limit-at), which will assure traffic in Rest or HTTP-Downloads or P2P don’t monopolize bandwidth from higher priorities queues in moments of saturation, while at the same time can “borrow” bandwidth (Max-Limit) from other child queues if they don’t have traffic.
This won’t make miracles, but you’ll assure overall networking is smooth and prevent users noticing saturation with most noticeable (interactive) services: e.g. VoIP, Gaming, browsing web pages, etc.