QoS - Network speed balancing based on client priority. Possible?

[rkk2025]

Hi, back when I bought my RT-AC68U, I was hoping that by using the advertised QoS I would be able to priorize clients on my network over other when they are all downloading at the same time, but half a year later I still wasn't able to make this work. So maybe my concept of QoS is just wrong, so I would be grateful if somebody could enlighten me a bit here in what I'm doing wrong and what I'm missing out here.

The problem: I have several clients (mostly guests) on my network who like downloading huge games trough Steam. The problem is that I have a fairly limited internet speed in my area (around 23Mbit) which gets easily maxed out when somebody is downloading. When this happens all other clients in the network get extremely slow internet speed, enormous latencies and frequently time-out while just browsing simple websites. So, I would like to throttle some selected clients I know like to download frequently, but only when I need the bandwidth for myself or the other priorized clients. The throttled (de-priorized) clients should be able to enjoy the full speed when nobody is using the internet, but get throttled when another priorized client is downloading or using the bandwidth.

Using the "Bandwidth Limiter" in the QoS section does the job, but in a static way (This is the configuration I'm using right now). But the throttled client has always slow speed, even when there is nobody else using that bandwidth, which is not what I'm ideally looking for.

At first, I thought that I would be able to do that from the "QoS - WAN/LAN Bandwidth Monitor" section in my Asus router by assigning the desired clients to "lowest" and "highest" but that doesn't seem to do anything. "Adaptive QoS" doesn't seem to change anything and seems more to be focusing on the packet application type (VoIP, Gaming, and so on) but not on a per client configuration. Then finally I was convinced that "Traditional QoS" is exactly what I was looking for, where you can specify the bandwidth for the differently priorized clients. But this didn't work eider.

Is it possible to have QoS working per client instead of a global per packet type priorization? Is it even possible to implement a configuration I'm trying to achieve on the Asus routers?


Any help is highly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[ColinTaylor]

So, I would like to throttle some selected clients I know like to download frequently, but only when I need the bandwidth for myself or the other priorized clients. The throttled (de-priorized) clients should be able to enjoy the full speed when nobody is using the internet, but get throttled when another priorized client is downloading or using the bandwidth.

What you are describing is Traditional QoS. Unfortunately that is known to be broken in stock firmware (as well as Merlin). There appears to be no desire from Asus to fix it because they have moved their focus to Adaptive QoS.

I've not tried using Adaptive QoS because I use John's forked firmware (which doesn't have it). John has fixed Traditional QoS in his build and I can report that it works very well.

 

[rkk2025]

Well that are good news. At least I wasn't that wrong. Thanks for pointing me to a working fw.

What about the new 382.x builds? Do they have working traditional QoS or did Asus remove that option completely now? Or are they selling broken routers now as a business?

 

[ColinTaylor]

Sorry, I don't know the situation with Traditional QoS in 382.

 

[Avin4]

I'm using AC66U and I think my traditional QoS works. Actually on this model you only got traditional and band-limiter.
I'm using BT download on one PC and found video streaming from internet lagged, even when I set speed limits in BT download software. Then I created some rules in QoS and they can work well simultaneously.
Basically you set web surf to highest, then Set those steam downloaders a lower priority with their MAC addresses in user-defined QoS rules, in the user-defined priority just set the download and upload limits of all priorities to 100%, in this way when clients with higher priority do not occupy your internet, the ones with lower priority can download/upload in full speed.

 

[NGRhodes]

This can be done with Adaptive QoS.
In the app analysis screen you can choose priority of individual devices by dragging the priory tag over the listed device name (don't forget to click save when you are done).
What I do is set higher priorities for my known devices (med, high and highest as needed), then all guests get the (lower) default priority.

 

[ColinTaylor]

I'm using AC66U and I think my traditional QoS works.

It works in some use cases but not others, so it is possible that in your particular case it's OK.

This can be done with Adaptive QoS.

He has an AC66U, so it doesn't have Adaptive QoS.

 

[NGRhodes]

He has an AC66U, so it doesn't have Adaptive QoS.

Sorry, I was responding to the OP, who is using an AC68U.

 

[FreshJR]

Adaptive QOS first takes traffic type priority (VoIP, Gaming, and so on) and then within those categories it evaulates user priority (Highest, high, medium, default, lowest).

While not on the same setup screen, both settings are used. Use Adaptive and give both those users and downloads lowest priority.