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Filmo · May 6, 2005, 11:06 PM

After reading about Throttle Pro site which seems to manage ACK packets to help maintain download speeds while uploading on a asymmetric DSL line, I started to wonder if such QoS traffic shaping is inclued in any hardware router I could buy.

It's not that I'm against paying $20 for a software solution. It's just that in our office I don't want to be dependent on having one machine serving internet. I'd rather have a router in place. Currently we use one of those cheap Linksys router that you can get for $40 to take our fixed IP from the DSL provider and provide DHCP to the various machines on the network. We currently experience the reduced download whenever we're uploading (which is a lot of the time.)

Can anybody point me to a router/dedicated device that can provide this type of traffic shaping to help us improve our downloads while uploading. I'm not interested in a seperate server solution, only a dedicated device such as a router. I don't need the headache of admining yet another server

minimal · May 13, 2005, 07:32 AM

Actually Throttled Pro lets you throttle your entire lan if you use Internet Connection Sharing (natd). You can either do this on Mac OS X with Throttled Pro or use the command line version for FreeBSD. To my knowledge no home routers provide ack packet priority, but they do offer other less versitile solutions.

Personally I really dig D-Link's new gaming router. Even though its catered toward gamers, it has quality QoS features, but no ACK packet priority.

Filmo · May 13, 2005, 11:30 AM

What would be some business class products that offer this type of traffic shaping as an appliance. Some poking around seems to indicate that some Cisco product with IOS software provides for traffic shapping.

minimal · May 13, 2005, 11:57 AM

There is many appliances that offer QoS, however the only products I have seen that do ACK priority are Throttled Pro, Carrafix, and OpenBSD's pf. All the others do other types of prioritization.

For the consumer field however there is very few that offer QoS besides the D-Link Gaming router... but even that isn't enough for my personal tastes. Most people just address this issue by increasing the amount of bandwidth to their servers, consumers just don't have that option with dsl/cable plans.

Right now we have very few options to get quality QoS features unless you get high end routing equipment or use a computer to do your routing (openbsd/freebsd/osx). There is also limited QoS features in the hacked sveasoft firmware for Linksys routers.

Anyhow, if you find any cool toys definitely post them here.

Filmo · Jan 18, 2007, 09:40 PM

We been using Throttled Pro to cap our uploads so that our download bandwidth isn't killed everytime we do uploads (we upload by FTP all day long, so it was really an issue.) It's been a great utility to optimize our upload and download speeds so that our network can upload at about 90% of rated speed while allowing full speed downloads at the same time, which is totaly awesome.

Throttled Pro worked great on our G3's, G4's and G5s, but now that I've moved one of our machines to an Intel iMac, it doesn't seem to work any more on that new Intel iMac.

It either caps ALL network traffic (including the file sharing on the internal network) or none of it. (I don't have the 'Cap LAN' box check... so it should be working. I've also tried every other variation.)

It's driving me crazy. Does anybody know if Throttled Pro works with Intel iMacs. I don't understand why it wouldn't be. All the other settings seem to be fine.

On the working machines, it caps the uploads to external IP address but allows internal (192.168.x.x traffic) to pass un-capped.

Problem Machine:

17" iMac Core 2 Duo 1.5 GB RAM
Parallels installed

Other Machines (still working on the same network)
G3s, G4s, G5s. 10.3.9 to 10.4.8 Systems.
Throttled Pro works great on them.

????

My only thought is that Perhaps because Parallels installs two 'virtual' ports, that perhaps that is affecting it. (en2 and en3 are installed by Parallels. That said, I've been hypervigilant to make sure the en0 ( the actual ethernet connection to the LAN) is selected in Throttled Pro

minimal · Jan 18, 2007, 10:40 PM

Filmo, Throttled Pro should be working fine on your Intel mac. I would make sure you are using the latest release and make sure to reinstall the unix tools. I would even have it zap your current config file (you can backup your old one). This should overwrite the binary (/usr/local/sbin/throttled) with the latest Universal Binary.

I also have a MacBook Pro using Parallels and it seems to work just fine on my end, so I am sure you can get it working. =)