QoS
QoS or Quality of Service makes it possible to provide different priority (bandwidth) to different applications, rules and subscribers. With this functionality you can easily control the bandwidth of all subscribers in your network.
QoS comes standard with some limitations, to have full access you have to buy the QoS module. Limitations in the standard version are:
Tree has only 1 level
No priorities = no bandwidth allocation
Only groups are available, network policies (including Layer 7), user profiles and group profiles are not available.
There are 3 types of nodes (the rectangles):
Group: Group nodes can contain other groups, user profiles or group profiles as children. Group nodes can be used in a billing plan or location but only if the node has no children. The bandwidth of the selected node will be divided over all subscribers in that node.
User profile: A user profile is assigned per subscriber, so if the node has a download limitation of 5000kbps, each subscriber with this profile will have a maximum download limitation of 5000kbps (as long as the total bandwidth of his parent is not reached!). User profiles can contain other nodes (children) to control their traffic, this can be done by creating child nodes, assign them some bandwidth. And finally create a network policy on the user profile node that links to the child node. Traffic that triggers a certain rule will then be handled by that specific node.
Group profile: This is almost the same as a user profile, but here you define also the total bandwidth for all users in this group. This is designed for simultaneous user accounts. For instance, you can define a total bandwidth of 5000kbps and an individual of 1000kbps, this means that users will get 1000kbps maximum but the total of all users in this profile will never go over 5000kbps. So as soon as this profile reaches 6 users, users will no longer have 1000kbps (5000kbps/6 users)
You can add a node (the rectangle) by clicking on the plus in the first one (root). A node under a new node is called a child node. The node above the child node is called the parent node.
There are a few properties that you can configure when you create a new node.
Priority: Priorities are being used for bandwidth allocation, available bandwidth is first served to users with a higher priority, as soon as bandwidth is available other users with a lower priority will get their normal bandwidth again. The bandwidth of a child can never exceed the bandwidth of his parent.
The sort of node it is (User, group, group profile).
You can configure a network policy on a node. But you can only do this on the parten node of group profile/user profile
Can be applied on:
Location
Mac user
Billing plan
subscriber
Example
We are going to use an example to make it more understandable.
We will configure a QoS setup for users in 1st, 2nd and 3th class. We wil also apply some network policies on them. We need to make the 1ste node editable. You need to click on the edit icon in it and then you can enable it.
Now we are going to add 3 groups: first_class, second_class and third_class. The first class will be able to use the full bandwidth. The second will be limited till 8000 kbps and the third till 5000 kbps. To add them you need to click on the plus symbol and fill in the following things:
Name: first_class, second_class, third_class
Priority: for first_Class 1, second_Class 2, third_class 3
Bandwidth down: 10 - 10000, 10 - 8000, 10 - 5000
Bandwidth up: 10 - 10000, 10 - 8000, 10 - 5000
Type: group users
Now you need to have something like this.
The first class users need to be able to brows the internet at an acceptable speed. But we don't want that they use all the available bandwidth for playing world of warcraft so we are going to limit that specific bandwidth.
We need to add two more nodes to accomplish that. The first one will be internet and the second will be wow.
To do this you need to do the following steps:
Click on the plus in the first_class node
Fill in a name and choose a priority
Enable default ( )
Fill in the bandwidth for Download and upload
Click on save
Do the same thing for wow but choose a lower priority and lower bandwidth. Now you will have something like this.
And now are we going to apply some network policies as last and final step.
Click on the edit symbol in the first_class node
Click on the plus symbol next to network policies
Select wow in network QoS profiles
Choose the second radiobutton and select worldofwarcraft
Click on save and close the Details window
Click on apply configuration at the top of the page.