ENS on selected network adapters

[SuperJ]

I'm currently experimenting with wingate 5.2 on windows 2000. It appears to be an excellent software. I am using the NAT feature at the moment and I have an issue. I would like to enable the ENS driver on only one of my two internal NICs. In other words I only want NAT avaialble on one card.
Is this possible?

THe reason I'd like to do this is to be able to bind VMware to the second card so I can use the more advance QOS features provide by Linux.

Any help would be deeply appreciated.

Regards,
SupaJ

[genie]

Hi,

First of all, I would recommend to use the latest version of Wingate - v6 - it is far more stable and provides more features than v5.

In regard to the adapter selection - you can mark an adapter as DMZ to disable NAT through it.

[SuperJ]

Hi,
thanks Genie for such a quick response. I'm currently tryong out Wingate 6.04. Here is my setup;
- Windows 2000 PC
- USB ADSL modem(PPPoA) - works like a dialup connection
- Wingate 6.04
- Bandwidth Controller (http://www.bandwidthcontroller.com/)
- Internet bandwidth = 256 kBits/s

Well the good news is that v6.04 is up and it is running smoothly. MY problem is with traffic shaping or to be more specific QOS. I've tried the bandwidth limiting feature of Wingate and it works. My problem is with prioritising traffic. I've tried to prioritize traffic originating from port 80 on the internet(http traffic) but it just does not seem to work. I've also tried the minimum bandwidth feature but it does not appear to work. Hence the reason why I've install Bandwidth Controller version 1.7. However, that too does not seem to prioritise my traffic, though bandwidth limiting works.

These are the questions that I have;

1) Is it really possible to prioritise traffic under Microsoft Windows?
2) Has any one been able to achieve the above mention?
3) Is my internet bandwidth(256kbit/s) too low to do QOS?

If QOS has worked for anyone using either Wingate v6 or bandwidth controller(v0.31 or 1.07), would you please provide some info on the ruleset use. Please remember that all I want to do is to give http traffic priority over all others so that everyone wil be able to surf the web without difficulty at anytime.

Thanks for your cooperation.
Regards,
SupaJ.

[genie]

The short answer is no :)
The problem with traffic prioritization is that it does not really depend on the routing machine (Wingate, in this particular case) - QoS should be known and supported thoughout the entire packet's journey to the destination and back. Besides, even though you have full control over the rate/bandwidth of the local stations (being a router for them) you have no control over the incoming data - in case of TCP you even make things worse because of the retransmissions of the lost packets (lost because of the throttling or QoS settings). This can be aleviated a little by manipulating the TCP window value (Wingate throttling control provides this feature) but it is not 100% reliable and used mostly to smooth traffic patterns. However, in Wingate you can assign traffic priorities and through experimenting with priority classes settins in BandwidthController parameter you might get good results.

[SuperJ]

Thanks a million Genie.

Regards.

[adrien]

PS, you said source port of 80 for HTTP. The destination port is 80 for HTTP, but the source port will be anything in general. We've not previously had a problem prioritising HTTP.

Adrien

[SuperJ]

Hi Adrien and the rest of Wingate Staff and fans,

you said source port of 80 for HTTP. The destination port is 80 for HTTP, but the source port will be anything in general. We've not previously had a problem prioritising HTTP.

Adrien, I wasn't specifically referring to wingate when I said the source port is 80. This issue is itself a bit confusing. Your source or destination port depend on which end you looking from. In this case I said source because I was looking at the data as originating from the internet. Have you ever seen Bandwidth Controller, it is even worse - what was 'send'(download) in v0.31 is now upload. Anyways, this is beside the issue. I know I was specifying the right source and destination because bandwidth limiting(capping) worked. It is traffic prioritization that did not work for me. I created two rulesets, one for ftp(originates on 21 but data tranfers is on 20, hence i used 20) and one for http(80). And no matter how much I tried to give the http traffic priority over the ftp it simply did not work. OK. If it did work for you, Adrien, could you please provide us with,
Scheduling -> Rule Selection Method,
Restriction -> Priority group, Kilobits of traffic,
Rule-> Source - Destination:Port,
and any other relvant info(in other words could you please supply a hypothetical example, eg http vs ftp).

Regards,
SupaJ

[genie]

A word of caution about FTP - FTP handler uses the same rule for data channel as for the control channel if "Apply to induced traffic" option is checked.

Have you tried changing priorities counters?

[SuperJ]

With all due respect, Adrien and Genie, I think that a bandwidth control configuration example illustrating prioritization from qbik would be best for all your visitors(possibly future customers). Could you please provide one?