Hardware offloading, Necessary?

[arul]

I have been wondering this for the longest time and i also did experiment on my own. i get mixed results out of it. Enabled hardware offloading and get snappy web surfing but crippled video streaming e.g.: youtube. got tired of it, disabled the offload, then web surfing isn't as snappy, but video streaming will get better, not perfect, what i meant by that is, the video loads fast but not as instant.
so i never get a better option from either. i also did some research via google and get "too technical" explanation and ended up confusing myself. this is not much of a problem to me. but understanding what I'm doing/facing would be great and answer my unanswered question. thanx for yr time guys.

 

[Cyanix]

What kind of hardware offloading exactly ?

Is it the NIC checksum offload, or the settings in windows, such as TCP chimney/ DCA/ TCPA ?

 

[arul]

it was a settings on the router called Hardware offload NAT/Routing IPv4. i can either offload tcp & udp wired/wireless.

 

[xnor]

I have hardware offload NAT disabled. I'm using traffic shaping and so I actually have to disable it.

When you enable it, for example packets from a computer in a LAN targeted at the Internet will not be visible to the Linux firewall but be sent directly through some hardware chip. As such with offloading enabled certain firewall rules will fail, and traffic shaping will fail horribly because the shaper needs to see all traffic.

I couldn't measure nor did I notice added delay.

 

[jerry6]

where is this setting ?

 

[RogerSC]

where is this setting ?

This is an RT-N56U thing. I don't think that the other Asus routers have these settings.

 

[jerry6]

Thanks Roger SC , could not figure out why I was not able to find the setting . Not having the RT N56 explains it !

 

[RogerSC]

Thanks Roger SC , could not figure out why I was not able to find the setting . Not having the RT N56 explains it !

Yes, for best results posters should really mention the model of the router that they're talking about, now that all the Asus wireless-n routers have been grouped together into one forum. Most do, but sometimes it gets forgotten.