Rate limit on router or AP?

[mlg321]

I'm rate limiting guests on an open network currently via bandwidth qos on the router. The other option is to rate limit downlink and uplink at the WiFi access point? Any right way to do this?

 

[Nullity]

There are some QoS features in WiFi itself. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Multimedia_Extensions


I do not think they can be leveraged to artificially rate-limit though, as they seem to only be able to set priorities, not bitrates.


I would keep it simple and do all my traffic-shaping at the gateway. That seems to be standard practice.

 

[mlg321]

There are some QoS features in WiFi itself. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Multimedia_Extensions


I do not think they can be leveraged to artificially rate-limit though, as they seem to only be able to set priorities, not bitrates.


I would keep it simple and do all my traffic-shaping at the gateway. That seems to be standard practice.

My AP's have qos rate limit settings. I can rate limit down and up at both the router or access point, just wanting to know if there is a right or wrong way to do if.

 

[Nullity]

I'm rate limiting guests on an open network currently via bandwidth qos on the router. The other option is to rate limit downlink and uplink at the WiFi access point? Any right way to do this?

Apparently someone (me) did not read your post accurately enough. Lemme try again... :\

The only reason I would shape at the AP would be if my LAN bandwidth was becoming saturated and I wanted to stop client->AP->LAN->AP->client traffic, or perhaps if the client is attempting a DoS, it would be best to stop the traffic at the closest node (AP), so your LAN would not get as much DoS traffic. Otherwise, I would employ QoS at the gateway router because it is easier and I can think of no reason not to.

Pick whichever is easiest. Traffic-shaping rarely has a "right" or a "wrong". It is usually "better" or "best" type of thing, since traffic-shaping is largely a request rather than a demand. Like shaping egress vs shaping ingress. Only egress is under your control, ingress traffic is under the control of the sender who may or may not obey your requests.



More details could help if you've got some especially troubling situation.
Is shaping at the gateway router not working? Are you trying to control download or upload? Download, like I partly explained above, cannot be fully controlled, or in the case of the UDP protocol, you cannot control download/incoming traffic at all.

 

[mlg321]

Apparently someone (me) did not read your post accurately enough. Lemme try again... :\

The only reason I would shape at the AP would be if my LAN bandwidth was becoming saturated and I wanted to stop client->AP->LAN->AP->client traffic, or perhaps if the client is attempting a DoS, it would be best to stop the traffic at the closest node (AP), so your LAN would not get as much DoS traffic. Otherwise, I would employ QoS at the gateway router because it is easier and I can think of no reason not to.

Pick whichever is easiest. Traffic-shaping rarely has a "right" or a "wrong". It is usually "better" or "best" type of thing, since traffic-shaping is largely a request rather than a demand. Like shaping egress vs shaping ingress. Only egress is under your control, ingress traffic is under the control of the sender who may or may not obey your requests.



More details could help if you've got some especially troubling situation.
Is shaping at the gateway router not working? Are you trying to control download or upload? Download, like I partly explained above, cannot be fully controlled, or in the case of the UDP protocol, you cannot control download/incoming traffic at all.

I get slightly btter download stability when rate limiting on the AP per WLAN than on the router per IP address range, but higher ping.

 

[Cloud200]

This depends on what you are doing.
If you are going to share network resources on the LAN, the rate limit at the gateway.
If this is for something like a guest network at a coffee shop then a rate limit at the AP level usually gives me better results since the only thing that actually works for limiting is the upload.