Setting up QoS in TP-Link Router TD-W8901G

[MrKarma4ya]

I have a TP-Link Router TD-W8901G, a pretty old router. I have 2 computers connected via Ethernet cable and 1 smart phone connected via Wi-Fi. Problem is, when someone uses YouTube in one computer, internet in my computer crawls. Other sites don’t hog as much bandwidth as YouTube. I play Team Fortress 2 a lot and my ping increases from 150 to 800 the moment someone uses YouTube. I have tried bandwidth allocation via QoS, but with no luck because I can’t understand the friggin QoS page.
I have browsed so many pages, but all pages explain about other routers and new TP-Link Routers. I am hoping someone can guide me with QoS for my router. I want to provide equal bandwidth to both computers so I won’t lag as much. Here are the screenshots:

 

[bill001g]

Isn't it nice how fancy that page is with all those options and you come to find that these screens pretty much accomplish nothing.

This router like most can only limit data being sent to the internet (ie UPLOAD). If you are like most people you are exceeding your download bandwidth.

The download data is in full control of the ISP. They will make choice of what to discard and by the time your router gets involved the data is gone and you can not just recreate it and drop something else.

There are some routers that can affect the download rate by placing hard caps on the incoming data but this is not really QoS. The router has already received the data and is hoping that if it causes enough errors the end pc will slow down the rate it requests data. It does not always work.

It really doesn't matter your router does not have the ability to do what you want and since it is a DSL router you do not have the option to even try third party firmware.

 

[MrKarma4ya]

Isn't it nice how fancy that page is with all those options and you come to find that these screens pretty much accomplish nothing.

This router like most can only limit data being sent to the internet (ie UPLOAD). If you are like most people you are exceeding your download bandwidth.

The download data is in full control of the ISP. They will make choice of what to discard and by the time your router gets involved the data is gone and you can not just recreate it and drop something else.

There are some routers that can affect the download rate by placing hard caps on the incoming data but this is not really QoS. The router has already received the data and is hoping that if it causes enough errors the end pc will slow down the rate it requests data. It does not always work.

It really doesn't matter your router does not have the ability to do what you want and since it is a DSL router you do not have the option to even try third party firmware.

Thanks you bill001g for the answer. However, upon posting the same query at tp-link forums, I got this answer: "http://www.tp-link.com/en/faq-537.html - this is not QoS feature with bandwidth manage" I hope it works!

 

[bill001g]

Sure it will work for data you SEND to the internet if that is the problem.

Besides what does "highest" really mean, if it is like most systems it does not guarantee a bandwidth.

I can promise the DSCP value is a complete and total waste of time to set. Whoever says this does not understand packet marking.

 

[MrKarma4ya]

Sure it will work for data you SEND to the internet if that is the problem.

Besides what does "highest" really mean, if it is like most systems it does not guarantee a bandwidth.

I can promise the DSCP value is a complete and total waste of time to set. Whoever says this does not understand packet marking.

Actually, it was the router company itself whoput the page "http://www.tp-link.com/en/faq-537.html". Still, it did not work. I still get 600+ ping when someone uses Youtube. I guess the router cannot fix it.

However, is there a way, not with router but maybe tweaking windows files or cmd, that i can slow down Youtube videos in certain computers? Make it take more time to buffer? Perhaps it will reduce internet usage and give me a bit of a boost?

 

[bill001g]

The software would have to run on the pc that was running youtube. In a way you can do it with youtube itself by just telling it to play at lower speeds. Maybe some of the parental control software can do it. It has been a while (ie since the win xp days) since i played with this software.

It is generally called traffic shaping software.

I suspect though this can not be solved by technical means alone. If you that huge ping times just because someone is watching youtube it means you have a very low bandwidth connection. You would have to get a agreement to never watch HD video and even that may not be good enough if you only have say 3m or less. Even if you could say get the ISP to the QoS on their router what you would accomplish is your game would run fine and youtube would constantly go into buffering mode. We then might see the other person here complaining that youtube does not work when other people play games.


My comment on the DSCP are more because I feel even the existence of this feature on a router designed to be used as gateway to the internet is outright deceptive. Lets assume it magically could be done, why would everyone not set ALL their traffic to be "Best" priority so you would always get priority over all your neighbors. If everyone did it would be the same as everyone setting it to the default of 0 and that is what the ISP actually do is clear the marking bits to 0.

QoS really can only be used in a enterprise installation where you control all the connection between location and the company can decide say email traffic is more important than say web surfing. On actual enterprise routers you can do all kinds of interesting things to prioritize traffic and it works extremely well. We have had circuits running at 100% load and run video conference systems over them and they run completely jitter free.

The only time I have ever seen QoS used on a internet connection is on large enterprise installs where the ISP allows you configure QoS on their router for the connection coming to your company. Even then the only time we ever used it was to try to kill a denial of service attack.