How to prioritise internet traffic
IMPROVE YOUR HOME OR OFFICE INTERNET PERFORMANCE BY GETTING TO GRIPS WITH YOUR ROUTER’S ‘QUALITY OF SERVICE’ SETTINGS.
LOTS OF PEOPLE live in busy houses with way too much competition for the internet connection. If you’ve ever found yourself yelling up to the kids that they need to stop torrenting so that you can play a game or stream a movie, then this column is for you. We’re going to walk through the configuration of quality of service on a consumer router.
Simply put, quality of service (QoS) is way of prioritising certain network traffic over others. It puts that traffic at the head of the queue, so to speak, so it gets reliable internet access while other traffic has to wait. Nearly every router supports QoS in some fashion, some better than others.
WHAT CAN I PRIORITISE?
You can prioritise either particular applications or particular devices. When it comes to prioritising apps, it uses what is called the port number to identify the app. This bears some explanation. When an application on your computer or device communicates on the internet, it uses a particular port number. That port number is used to identify the kind of traffic it is, so that the computer at the other end knows which application to send the data to.
For example, HTTP (web) traffic typically uses port 80. When you send a request for a website, your computer will send it on port 80. The server at the other end will receive the data, see that it’s port 80, and figure: “Ah, this is a web request; I’ll send the data on to the web server app.”
In QoS, you can prioritise traffic based on its port. This will effectively prioritise traffic for the corresponding application. If you wanted to make sure your web traffic has the highest priority, then you would set port 80 as high priority. To find out what port your chosen app uses, however, you will probably need to do a web search. Some apps also have a user-configurable port number.
The other thing you can prioritise is a particular device. You can set it so that your gaming PC, for example, always has the highest priority traffic. Typically, this is done by prioritising traffic from a particular IP address or MAC address (the latter is the unique identifier for local Ethernet and wireless devices).
WHAT SHOULD I PRIORITISE?
So what kinds of things are the best uses for QoS? The first thing you should know is it’s not terribly useful for inbound traffic (like video streaming) since that data has already come down the internet connection before QoS can be applied — but it’s great when you want certain outbound traffic to get priority. Some examples of things it’s useful for are: Online games VoIP and real-time communications Web surfing (which uses quite a few upstream command and control elements) BitTorrent and P2P (since these involves quite a bit of upstream communications) Things it’s not particularly useful for are: Video streaming from the likes of Netflix or YouTube Direct downloading from the web For most people, it’s online gaming more than anything else that drives QoS in the home, since rapid response in those games is vital to the experience.
HOW TO CONFIGURE QOS
Unfortunately, there’s no universal guide we can provide for setting up QoS, since QoS implementations differ considerably across router models. Some have graphical UIs and abundant presets; others require you to type in MAC addresses and port numbers manually.
Instead, we’ll walk through setting it up on a Linksys router so you can get a vibe of how it works. You should be able to apply these lessons to other routers. Log into the router interface. Find the QoS settings. On Linksys, it’s called ‘Media Prioritisation’. Turn it on if it’s not on already. Decide whether you want to prioritise a device (Step 4) or an app (Step 5).
If it’s a device you want to prioritise, look under the list of devices and find the one you want to give priority to. Drag and drop it into the High Priority list. If it’s an application or game, then go to the list of pre-configured games and apps on the right and choose one. When you do, a little ‘hamburger’ handle will appear next to it. Drag and drop that into the High Priority list. If the app you want to prioritise isn’t anywhere, you’ll have to create a new entry in the list. Find ‘Add a New Application’ at the bottom of the App list. A pop-up will appear. In the pop-up, type the name of the app and its port number, then choose to prioritise TCP, UDP or both. You’ll have the option to enter a port range, and all ports in the range will be prioritised. For apps that use multiple ports, you can enter multiple ranges. Once you’ve done that, the app will be added to the list and you can drag it into the High Priority bar. Click OK and you’re done. The apps or devices you selected should now have high priority.
We should note here that Linksys’ QoS system is particularly user friendly. Other systems may not have Linksys pre-configured app and games lists and no drag-and-drop system. To identify a system you want to prioritise, you may have to know its IP address or MAC address. You may also have to look up the port numbers for a particular app you want to prioritise. They might also have multiple priority levels, to differentiate important traffic from really, really important traffic. In any case, don’t be afraid to check it out — you can’t really do any harm and if things go bad, you can just turn it off again. Go nuts, and see how it works out for you.