[sllug-members]: DHCP Configuration - Ultimately to be a traffic shaper

[Knight Walker]

On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 14:32 -0800, Nathan Lane [yho] wrote:
> we have decided that we don't want to do that.  The reason is that our
> network is so unique that the last appliance we used wouldn't
> configure corectly and did things like slow our gigabit network to 14
> kbps, cause timeouts on our website, and timeouts on our client sites.
> This is why we have concluded to use debian or red hat to shape our
> traffic using any of the available tools.  The problem is that I'm the
> "guru" and even I'm not exactly sure about how to do it.  I have the
> necessary tools I believe: iproute2, iptables, tcng, and others.  I
> know I probably only need one.  But anyway.  I'd like to know how to
> do it.  My company would like me to know how to do it, and so far
> everything short of Barnes and NOble has failed, just because I
> haven't tried them yet.  I just though someone on here would have some
> tips or experience in this realm of Linux.

Because of a "unique" situation with my ISP, I decided to do something
about traffic shaping a few years ago.  I went to TLDP ( www.tldp.org )
and began reading the "Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control
HOWTO" ( http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Adv-Routing-HOWTO/ ) and after many
moons and several failed attempts, I discovered "The Ultimate Traffic
Conditioner: Low Latency, Fast Up & Downloads"
( http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Adv-Routing-HOWTO/lartc.cookbook.ultimate-tc.html )
I chose the HTB script (Section 15.8.3 toward the bottom of the page) as
it was reported to be as good as the CBQ method above it but use less
resources.  It is a newer method, introduced around kernel 2.4.18 IIRC,
but as long as you're running a non-ancient kernel (I consider anything
older than 2.4.20 or 2.6.13 to be ancient) it should work.  It took some
tweaking, and I've since made changes to it, but it worked pretty much
as advertised.  It uses the 'tc' command which on my systems is part of
the iproute (2.6.16) package.  It integrates well with my iptables
firewall (i.e they both work without causing problems for the other),
and it doesn't tax the firewall system.

I don't usually recommend TLDP to many people, since they usually want
some GUI tool to do the work for them, but for those who want to grok
the nuances and improve their skill set, it's a prime place to look.
Most of the HOWTOs are distro agnostic and let you get elbow-deep into
the system so you can actually learn about it.

-KW