Gargoyle - Good Family Network Solution

I'm a gamer, I have 4 other members of the family who don't game but also like to download/browse the web/play videos etc. I initially bought a Billion which I loved as a router but QOS wise it just wasn't managing to achieve the results I needed, basically meaning that I had to play after bedtimes or kick people of the network.

Whilst chatting in the Billion forum last week I came across an open source solution called Gargoyle, these guys have taken an existing Linux firmware and then tacked a user friendly web front end onto it. Makes it easy to manage and further they are gamers/family men as well so my QOS issue was also in the solution. Now I have the solution I am totally blown away by it - to the point you want to shake people and say, why use that solution when this one exists at a fraction of the cost!

So what's involved, IMHO the easiest method is to get a Netgear 3700 v2 router (v1 or v2 will work), then using the Netgears update facility flash it onto the router and you have Gargoyle. Downsides, you need an adsl modem as the 3700 is a pure router (I used my old 834g which can be changed from an adsl router into a modem). Once up you have a surprisingly tidy set of options, you can set static ips from the web interface and ban ones not set by you, you can force users through the dns you set and a whole load more stuff.

The easiest way to demo what it has though is to show some screen shots

Breakdown of Connection list, note wifi signals and traffic for each of the connections


QOS Upload screen, you define rules (I use IPs) that fit for each of groups and then you set what type of distribution they should have


QOS Download - Similar to Upload and note you can see how the traffic breaks down


Now the great bit of Gargoyles QOS - the active congestion control, you set the bandwidth you have and then Gargoyle will keep an eye on the ping and if it starts going south it brings down the bandwidth to keep it in check - it will do this by a factor of 5. i.e set it to 5000 it will bring it down to 1000 if required


Want to restrict the study activities


Want to know whats being accessed on the web


Want to see what is being searched for


Lots more but I thought the bandwidth breakdown was also quite neat

So is it perfect, well teh QOS i'm still assessing. As part of this exercise - one of the Gargoyle devs was incredibly helpful. It turned out that whilst I have an 8mb connection at night that was turning to a 2mb bandwidth. It ewxplained a lot of the congestion issues I had been experiencing. Going from an 8mb standing start for active control was too much. I've set it now at 4500 and we shall see. You also have the worry you could potentially brick the router - was straight forward but it can never be guaranteed

The study restrictions, whilst in theory are great appear to still allow services to work, so you can restrict web pages but then that allows msn - not perfect but significantly better than I had

Feel free to fire away any questions/thoughts etc.

Just going to add to this as I have learnt along the way and maybe now understand a little why previous QOS solutions have been ineffectual for me. To the point I started to believe QOS on adsl was impossible.

The trouble with adsl is the line speed is rarely static. So for me if I download now i'll probably get between 6 and 7mb, however if I go into peak time I might see as low as 3 to 4mb. However QOS relies on you being able to state a space between what you can do and what your line can do. So typically you should set what you can do to 80% of what your line can do (on the download), this leaves a space in the line to stop the congestion and allow all the rules to be processed. But in the example I have I set my 6mb example at say 5mb max - as soon as my line starts creeping down to 5mb and below QOS will no longer work and the line can get congested. I believe Gargoyle is the only system that effectively tracks the cogestion of the line and as it detects congestion it pulls the limit down up to 20% of the actual line speed.

Works incredibly well and for the first time in years I now have no worries what the family is doing whilst I game.

Right i've just fell upon this whilst trying to work out how to QoS after many failing with flatmates etc... I think i might jump and give it a try. Is it possible to just enable QoS at certain times? I don't want to be doing this all the time, but "peak" hours the internet MUST be shared, which is what some people don't understand at all... .

Currently their is no way of scheduling qos - you could post on gargoyles forums re this feature but tbh I think you will be surprised how well the active control works. All it does is ensure that for your current line speed you operate at 85% but that difference is huge for general web performance and gaming etc.

Also note if only one class is on then it realises qos would be pointless so it doesn't enable it. Finally it only brings in % distribution if the line is maxed and then only proportionally between the classes on.

I would recommend one of the Atheros AR71XX Routers from this list

http://www.gargoyle-router.com/wiki/doku.php?id=supported_routers_-_tested_routers

Because you can use the routers existing flash capability to achieve, personally I think the netgear 3700 v2 is a good bet but it's your call.

Any questions fire away. The gargoyle forum is also very actively supported

Do your house mates know your are monitoring what websites they are browsing or what they are looking for on the web?

Seems like a massive breach of privacy on their part.

Nice !!!! I want to be a PITA too ... Think I'll stick this into a VM and have a play.

BTW Are there any others out there ?

tomwalker said:

Do your house mates know your are monitoring what websites they are browsing or what they are looking for on them web?

Seems like a massive breach of privacy on their part.

Click to expand...

My children you mean?

Yes they are all aware and I have sat down with them to show what level of monitoring it does. The web monitoring is an option you can have on or off and you can disable monitoring for selected ip addresses.

Subliminal Aura said:

Nice !!!! I want to be a PITA too ... Think I'll stick this into a VM and have a play.

BTW Are there any others out there ?

Click to expand...

Gargoyle sits on openwrt, so you get that as well.

Tomato is another that springs to mind but active congestion control I believe is only on gargoyle, so pretty much the only working qos solution on an adsl line - unless your adsl line speed remains static

tals said:

My children you mean?

Yes they are all aware and I have sat down with them to show what level of monitoring it does. The web monitoring is an option and you can disable monitoring for selected ip addresses.

Click to expand...

I'm sure they're 2 steps ahead of you bruv with your fancy pants QoS and packet filtering

Bet the 5 yr has an SSH tunnel bouncing off several servers and through Tor.

tals said:

Gargoyle sits on openwrt, so you get that as well.

Tomato is another that springs to mind but active congestion control I believe is only on gargoyle, so pretty much the only working qos solution on an adsl line - unless your adsl line speed remains static

Click to expand...

Yeah I've used Tomato, it's very good but doesn't have some of the added feature of this Gargoyle.

Thanks for the heads up.... and good luck with the kids. Honestly it's a losing battle mate - you restrict them at home but there's always mobile internet in the school playground

Bests

Subliminal Aura said:

I'm sure they're 2 steps ahead of you bruv with your fancy pants QoS and packet filtering

Bet the 5 yr has an SSH tunnel bouncing off several servers and through Tor.

Click to expand...

Unlikely, but you never know, tbh the use of the monitoring I'm still in two minds on - did I mention this has support for tor as well

tals said:

My children you mean?

Yes they are all aware and I have sat down with them to show what level of monitoring it does. The web monitoring is an option you can have on or off and you can disable monitoring for selected ip addresses.

Click to expand...

Ah ok that's fair enough. The original post just said house members and there are a lot of posts on this sub forum to deal with shared households and dealing with people who download all day.

Although anyone else using this for households such as the above might want to take this into account.

tomwalker said:

Ah ok that's fair enough. The original post just said house members and there are a lot of posts on this sub forum to deal with shared households and dealing with people who download all day.

Although anyone else using this for households such as the above might want to take this into account.

Click to expand...

Agreed, i wouldn't expect web monitoring to be enabled in this event, or if it was then all flatmates to have access to the information via the router, my wife for instance has the connection details for the router. tbh the big feature in Gargoyle is it's ability to handle QOS on adsl lines which can be a pain as the line speeds can be all over the shop

** corrected my original post **

This honestly seems perfect, or at least good enough to buy a compatible router and try it out.. Having a look at the available AR71XX hardware now

Mine will include housemate, of a sensible age, and everyone will be warned, I have nothing to hide from them at all. But instead of telling the problem cases once a month to back it off, i'll just tell them it's fixed and they can do what they will. I'll explain that having access to the router i have access to logs technically. But that I can also turn them off, and really, I couldn't be less bothered. Seriously how big would a log file like that get, and what kind of life would i lead sitting reading browsing habits? Almost bores me thinking about it!

Either way i have a strong suspicion this will be happening asap

Soooooo WZR-HP-AG300H appears to be very well specced and cheaper than the equivalent competition? Any reason why i shouldn't grab that?

That does look good, the gargoyle forum will also give you views but price wise that looks nice.

I think I have mentioned it but just in case you also need an adsl modem, if you have a netgear 834 (any of them - mine is an 834n) Then I used this page http://vpncasestudy.com/download/DG/DG834_Tips100.pdf, just do that no login details. The modem goes into the phone line then cable from the modem to the router and on gargoyle you set it as ppoe and do the connection as you would normally do on an adsl router. If you don't have the 834 then either you get a modem or bridge your existing router, but the modem route is easier - just bought another 834g from eBay for 10 pounds as a backup. The nice thing with this solution is I now have a backup modem and I have 2 backup routers

Finally the web monitoring is something that really shouldn't put people off, the default of monitoring is off and really is only of use for families. The features you get from gargoyle are very tidy and the active Congestion controlhas to be seen, it was even kicking in when I had Internet problems and my line sped was sub 1mb but gaming ping remained good.

I would recommend changing the default classes from slow med, fast to the names of your flat mates then group their devices, that way if an iPad is streaming that user takes the hit. Do class Identifying by ip, I force the ips using gargoyles dhcp of all devices and set the ip to keep it static.

Post how you get on or if you have any queries.

One aspect I liked on the netgear is if you do brick it then recovering it seems to be fairly straight forward

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=79802

Looking around the buffalo doesn't seem to bad but it is still more complex, that said it's unlikely and I'd prefer a buffalo to the netgear, but I do like this particular netgear - v2 not v1

I got mine for 65 after trawling the web and striking lucky but was worried I might have a v1 - not that it wouldn't have been fine as well

£65 is good! I just went for it, bought the AG300H or £85ish that's fine, i'd pay more to sort out bandwidth sharing issues!

One thing slightly worrying is that it's not officially supported by Gargole just yet, but it is by OpenWRT so it should be officially in Gargoyle soon. Saying that there are reports on many many forums of using Gargoyle on the AG300H (Which is slightly different from the G300H) but they both use the AR71XX and the right hardware so even if it isn't supported until 1.5.x is fully stable that's not a problem

Happy so far and waiting for it to arrive...

I am on 1.51 with no issues just didn't do 1.52 more because I couldn't see any major reason. But will probably update next update.

On the router issue, because Gargoyle is effectively a front end for openwrt then if it's listed in the supported routers on openwrt then it's supported on Gargoyle but you may want to confirm that on the Gargoyle forums but 99% certain that is how they do it.

Good luck I had a lot of fun setting mine up, its very intuitive.