Could someone help me out with QOS?

liamcrane · 22 Jul 2011 at 15:13

Hi all

Hope you can shed some light for me, i have just moved my router downstairs and i am thinking of getting myself a switch to connect up everything. 1 desktop upstairs, Xbox downstairs, i also have 2 wireless laptops. I think i only really need a small 4 port switch dont really think i even need gigabit speed i think 10/100 would be enough for my needs all be it i do like to stream media from my desktop to my xbox wirelessly. I always have the issue though when i am playing a game online via my wired desktop and my other half is on her wireless laptop i only have a 2.5mb connection as it is, would getting a QOS switch help prioritise the bandwidth to my desktop rather than spiltting evenly between the 2 devices?

Im kinda new to QOS so im not 100% up to how it all works

Hope you can help

Many thanks

varkanoid · 22 Jul 2011 at 17:50

What router do you have you might find it has some kind of QOS, and does that not have four ports ?

liamcrane · 22 Jul 2011 at 18:02

Hi mate, i only have a crappy sky sagemcom router so dont think it supports QoS. Im looking to upgrade to a gigabit network so was looking for a gigabit switch with QoS. Im pretty sure my desktop has a gigabit port as well as my laptop so i was thinking with some cat6 cable i could transfer and stream files between my two machines a gigabit speeds, would that work? I am looking into getting a router with gigabit ports but cant decide on one yet

Thanks for the responce much appreciated

KIA · 23 Jul 2011 at 22:54

Don't bother with QoS capable router. Install NetLimiter on her laptop.

liamcrane · 24 Jul 2011 at 09:47

Ok cool cheers for that fluff, how exactly does this little app work?

KIA · 25 Jul 2011 at 08:18

liamcrane said:
Ok cool cheers for that fluff, how exactly does this little app work?

It'll allow you to limit the Internet speed on her laptop and your online game experience should improve as a result.

Sin_Chase · 25 Jul 2011 at 11:41

fluff said:
Don't bother with QoS capable router. Install NetLimiter on her laptop.

Ignore this.

Limiting bandwidth is only half the battle.

You can still saturate the line with floods of requests - IE BitTorrent while using little bandwidth.

QoS is packet prioritisation as well as bandwidth throttling. Ideally you want to increase your gaming packet priority on the way out. It's still only a 'half baked' implementation but it works well enough really.

I might well be wrong here but I don't think you can get a working QoS solution for your internet line just by using a QoS enabled switch. You are better of implementing it on the gateway - IE get a router and/or firmware that supports it.

I use the QoS on my Netgear DGN2200 successfully, although I will admit it is a pretty naff implementation. It works though, my ping times never suffer as a result of what anyone else in the house does.

KIA · 26 Jul 2011 at 00:12

Sin_Chase said:
Ignore this.

Limiting bandwidth is only half the battle.

You can still saturate the line with floods of requests - IE BitTorrent while using little bandwidth.

NetLimiter will be fine. I have used it many times to prevent heavy users saturating a low bandwidth line. This includes BT. Ping was always <30ms.