The Traffic Shaping feature helps improve your network performance by prioritizing applications.
Traffic Shaping Setup
Enable Traffic Shaping
When this option is enabled, the router restricts the flow of outbound traffic so as not to exceed the WAN uplink bandwidth.
Automatic Classification
This option is enabled by default so that your router will automatically determine which programs should have network priority. For best performance, use the Automatic Classification option to automatically set the priority for your applications.
Dynamic Fragmentation
This option should be enabled when you have a slow Internet uplink. It helps to reduce the impact that large low priority network packets can have on more urgent ones by breaking the large packets into several smaller packets.
Automatic Uplink Speed
When enabled, this option causes the router to automatically measure the useful uplink and downlink bandwidth each time the WAN interface is re-established (after a reboot, for example).
Measured Uplink Speed
This is the uplink speed measured when the WAN interface was last re-established. The value may be lower than that reported by your ISP as it does not include all of the network protocol overheads associated with your ISP's network. Typically, this figure will be between 87% and 91% of the stated uplink speed for xDSL connections and around 5 kbps lower for cable network connections.
Manual Uplink Speed
If Automatic Uplink Speed is disabled, this option allows you to set the uplink speed manually. Uplink speed is the speed at which data can be transferred from the router to your ISP. This is determined by your ISP. ISPs often specify speed as a downlink/uplink pair; for example, 1.5Mbps/284kbps. For this example, you would enter "284". Alternatively you can test your uplink speed with a service such as
www.dslreports.com. Note however that sites such as DSL Reports, because they do not consider as many network protocol overheads, will generally note speeds slightly lower than the Measured Uplink Speed or the ISP rated speed.
Connection Type
By default, the router automatically determines whether the underlying connection is an xDSL/Frame-relay network or some other connection type (such as cable modem or Ethernet), and it displays the result as Detected xDSL or Frame Relay Network. If you have an unusual network connection in which you are actually connected via xDSL but for which you configure either "Static" or "DHCP" in the WAN settings, setting this option to xDSL or Other Frame Relay Network ensures that the router will recognize that it needs to shape traffic slightly differently in order to give the best performance. Choosing xDSL or Other Frame Relay Network causes the measured uplink speed to be reported slightly lower than before on such connections, but gives much better results.
Detected xDSL or Frame Relay Network
When Connection Type is set to Auto-detect, the automatically detected connection type is displayed here.
Add/Edit Traffic Shaping Rules
A Traffic Shaping Rule identifies a specific message flow and assigns a priority to that flow. For most applications, automatic classification will be adequate, and specific Traffic Shaping Rules will not be required.
Traffic Shaping supports overlaps between rules, where more than one rule can match for a specific message flow. If more than one rule is found to match the rule with the highest priority will be used.
Enable
Specifies whether the entry will be active or inactive.
Name
Create a name for the rule that is meaningful to you.
Priority
The priority of the message flow is entered here -- 1 receives the highest priority (most urgent) and 255 receives the lowest priority (least urgent).
Protocol
The protocol used by the messages.
Local IP Range
The rule applies to a flow of messages whose LAN-side IP address falls within the range set here.
Local Port Range
The rule applies to a flow of messages whose LAN-side port number is within the range set here.
Remote IP Range
The rule applies to a flow of messages whose WAN-side IP address falls within the range set here.
Remote Port Range
The rule applies to a flow of messages whose WAN-side port number is within the range set here.
Save/Update
Record the changes you have made into the following list.
Clear
Re-initialize this area of the screen, discarding any changes you have made.
Traffic Shaping Rules
This section lists all the defined Traffic Shaping Rules. Click the Enable checkbox at the left to directly activate or de-activate the entry. An entry can be changed by clicking the Edit icon or can be deleted by clicking the Delete icon. When you click the Edit icon, the item is highlighted, and the "Edit Traffic Shaping Rule" section is activated for editing.
