Comware

Hello

We are a small wireless ISP.
We have about 500 coustomers that get connection from us.
Most of them have 1 or 2 mbit connectons.

Today we use a 2626m to connect ouer backbone to fibre uplink.

But I`m locking to get better control with traffic, like bittorrent, limewire etc so that these applications don`t use to mutch bandwith.

Could I use the 7102dl router for that purpose?.

Thank you for any tips.

Hi,

the 2626M is a small switch which only has 10/100 ports with 2 dual personality ports at 10/100/1000 (mini-GBIC).

There are several things you will need to take into consideration if you are looking to replace this switch.

1, Do you require POE as you have stated that you are a small wireless ISP.

2, Do you require Gigabit ethernet ports.

3, I assume you are looking for layer 4 COS/QOS so that you can controll bandwidth via UDP/TCP port.

If the answer to all of the above is yes.

Then you may wish to swap the switch for a more advanced switch rather than a router.

The 3500yl-48G-PWR, this stackable switch gives you routing capability, (OSPF available with Premium licence), Full CoS/QoS to layer 4, PoE and gigabit ports throughout the switch.

Unfortunately with all the new ProCurve switches the dual personality ports take up the use of the RJ45 ports when a mini-GBIC is installed.

so to cover the port capacity of your older switch you need to go up a model.

If you are looking for more fibre ports though I would recommend using the 5406zl-48G whioch has the same features as the 3500yl but comes as a modular unit with better scalability for future planned growth.

I hope this helps,

If you have any further questions Please do not hesitate in asking.

Regards,

Jase

Thank you Jason.

1.I do not need POE.
2.No, not as the situation is today, but probably in the future.
3.Yes, guess that is the way to control P2P bandwith?.

I do not need fibre ports as the fibre uplink is converted to ethernet before this stage.

......

Hi

I don't think the 7102 can handle any kind of Traffic shaping functions or traffic control mechanisms.

Most of the Firewalls with IDP can control this kind of stuff by its policies.

Its like if you want to classify traffic, you create policies in the firewall and specify the amount of guaranteed bandwidth and maximum bandwidth, and the priority for each class of traffic.

If you don't want to use a Firewall, you can use QoS with DiffServ Codepoint Marking, but not with the 2600 series.

Maybe with the 3500 as Jason suggested, or with the new 2810 series.

All this in Hardware, you still can do that in Software, but it will be slow and its not a good solution for ISP :)

Good Luck !!!

Hi,

If you require better control the 2626 does Layer 4 CoS/QoS, with the latest version of software installed.

So there is no real need to replace the Switch.

But if you are requiring better bandwith shaping ie Rate limiting and Guaranteed minimum, the new Procurve switches will do this for you, and they have a higher backplane speed an example of which is:

2626 : 9.6 Gbps Backplane with Up to 6.6 million pps.

the 5406-48G : 346 Gbps Backplane with Up to 214 million pps

Since you do not require Fibre you will not have any costly Fibre transceivers to pay out for.

But if you do not require all 26 ports from the 2626 then a 2824 will do the same with Gigabit capability.

I hope this helps,

Jase

Ok.

Do you think the 2626 vil handle qos in a network like this without slowdowns?.

Basicly it`s all about getting control with P2P.

Hi,

You will have to monitor the network to see how much traffic you are handling, because if you set DSCP(Diffserv) policy and then configure the priority codepoints, and you don't have the bandwidth to handle the provisioning of Priorities you might find the queues might drop packets.

I would monitor the nework for a week to see how much bandwith is used to see if you have the ability to prioitize.

If you don't I would upgrade the switch to handle Gigabit, which will give you the bandwith to prioritize the traffic.

the details fro how to do this can be found:

Chapter/module 6 of the following PDF;

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/networking/software/2600-2800-4100-6108-AdvTraff-Oct2005-59908853.pdf

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Jase

The 2626 has very limited routing capabilities, it has a host route table of only 128 entries. After this is consumed it will start routing in software and performance will suffer. For your particular setup I would definitely avoid using the 2600.

Thank you for the tip Matt.

What would you recomend in this case?.

Hi,

Would this device (possibly 7102dl) be deployed at the customer site or your central site? I guess what you want to do is rate-limit certain traffic coming into your network, right? Can you expand on your topology?


Thanks,
Olaf

The network today is a flat switched layer 2 network with some vlans.

We have a sentral point with fibre uplink from internet.

From here we have seceral wimax senders hocked up, some directly via the switch, and some via point to point wireless bridges.

The coustomers is connected via wimax to ouer network.

The wimax subscriberunits is also in bridgemode, so the coustomers router etc gets the official IP adress.

The speed of the connection is set on the wimax base (1 or 2mbps).

So it`s a pretty dumb network....

The uplink to the internett is now about 80mbps

I`m locking to get a smarter use of the capacaty.

Basicly it`s about shaping traffic so that p2p (bittorrent, limewire etc) don`t use up all the bandwith. And getting voip a better deal :)

I relly need good tips and setup examples here, as I`m new to this.

Hi

I would really recommend you to go for a firewall, then you can have more control on your network and the traffic.

Example for that, is the Juniper SSG series, Netscreen ....

Good Luck !!!

All the coustomers have official IP adresses, and all ports available.
It needs to be that way, so I`m not closing any ports or something that I need a firewall for.

Hi,

Instead of "rate-limiting" the bad traffic, prioritize the "good" traffic like VOIP. If your Internet pipe is 80Mbit let's say for example you are seeing 70 % of this used by unwanted "peer-to-peer" traffic, why would you care unless you have an additional 50 % of traffic like VOIP that now drops packets. You would only care if "good" traffic doesn't make it through. This can be accomplished by using QoS for the good traffic. You could create 2 classes of traffic, one for good and one for bad traffic. You prioritize the good traffic so it could take up 80 % of your bandwidth (20 % for p-2-p so it doesn't starve). Your Internet pipe might always be utilized at 100% but this way you insure that the good traffic gets priority.
The general approach would be: Let customers use peer-to-peer applications if the bandwidth is available. In the case of congestion on the link to the Inernet, prioritize the good traffic using QoS. This is how most service providers implement "traffic control".
You can "mark" the packets as they come into our network, handle them accordingly in your backbone and then use those "markings" DSCP-codepoints, Diffserv or 802.1p tags to prioritize traffic going to the Internet.
Product-wise: Most of the managed ProCurve switches support QoS and so does the 7000dl router series.
Hope this helps.

Thank you Olaf.

Would the 2626m`S be effective enough to run QoS on my network, or will it slow things down?.

Out from the switches to the wireless bases I got 10-20mbit links to the wireless basestations.
Do I have to tell the switch how mutch bandwith each port (link) has available so that it can prioritize traffic?.

The bandwith should be shared by all these.
And also setup with QoS (so that the users behind the basestatin don`t use all the capacaty of the link to P2P).
The QoS should control both uplink and downlink.

The services I want to prioritize is 80 HTTP, 443 HTTPS and VOIP (any other suggestions?).
But I see different VOIP operators use different ports, right?. Thats a problem.
If i down prioritize some of the well known P2P ports and prioritize services like HTTP, how will the services that is not configured be prioritized?.

I`m new to this, so if you could give me some real world configuration examples and tips.

I tried to set the 2626 up with routing, some vlans etc, without qos.
After just a little while the switch slows down and almoast nothing gets through
Is this the limited routing capabilities you were talking about Matt, CPU utilization is about 80% when it happens.

That sounds very much like the limitation of the 2600's routing capabilities unfortunately.

Ok...

Any budget switches that got god routing capabilities?.

Many WISPs use microtik, pfsense or m0n0wall for routing/traffic shaping. I think you should stay with just VLANs on your switch and used one of the above to do traffic shaping. I use m0n0wall for my tiny little free hotspot network.