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RE: D-Link GamerLounge with GameFuel

GameTraveler — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 21:27:38 GMT

Hmmm, my understanding of how traffic shaping works is somewhat very general. Specific types of traffic are allowed a set percentage of the traffic; e.g. VOIP packets have a minimum reserved amount of 15%, while others were set with a maximum percentage. Depending on how 'smart' the traffic shaper is and how diligent the algorithms are, a dynamic test of the maximum bandwidth available would determine how much data a particular application or level of traffic can go through a specific port.

I suppose there would be a queue of sorts for any data that was held back when a threshold was reached for any maximum settings. This would allow for a guaranteed level of service, or rather a definite QoS level of applications like VoIP or even gaming.

This is probably very similar to some of the things that are in the KillerNIC...

RE: D-Link GamerLounge with GameFuel

Tytus — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 20:23:48 GMT

Great post! thanks for the information.

So, Traffic shaping == QOS in some lingos.

But how can traffic shaping work without lot's of queing as well...

i think the answer is that it HAS to do queing... but if you can identify which 'streams' can tolerate lots of queing (and use upstream bandwidth more when its idle), to which streams that need FAST response: then gaming traffic gets a boost and web traffic gets queued (and sent later).

My problem with that is: it inherently has to be an upstream (e.g. transmit) only feature... because downstream (RX) is going to be no problem getting it to the LAN network.

and the problem with that is: you can't stop ISPs from blasting you with TCP traffic (up to the TCP window size), once the transaction starts.

Still, I can see how it will help with gaming TX and the 'feel' of how responsive it would be... it's pretty cool actually!

Tytus

RE: D-Link GamerLounge with GameFuel

GameTraveler — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 21:37:54 GMT

Not so sure about that. Not in the sense of QoS as a network architect would see it.

The packet prioritization is the cheapest version of packet shaping/traffic shaping technology to hit the consumer market.

The Linksys + linux is a great idea, but the overall design of those small routers have smaller internal buffers. Using the linux + old PC would be better to design some type of packet shaping device for the home.

The GameFuel is a limited packet shaper that uses the UbiCom StreamEngine technology. Although they define it was using QoS, there are not additional QoS protocol information added to the traffic. Rather, the prioritization of traffic for specific ports is given a percentage of minimum bandwidth.

QoS - "Quality of Service can be provided by generously over-provisioning a network so that interior links are considerably faster than access links. This approach is relatively simple, and may be economically feasible for broadband networks with predictable and light traffic loads. The performance is reasonable for many applications, particularly those capable of tolerating high jitter, such as deeply-buffered video downloads."

versus

Traffic/packet shaping - "Traffic shaping provides a mechanism to control the volume of traffic being sent into a network (bandwidth throttling), and the rate at which the traffic is being sent (rate limiting). For this reason, traffic shaping schemes need to be implemented at the network edges to control the traffic entering the network. It also may be necessary to identify traffic flows at the ingress point (the point at which traffic enters the network) with a granularity that allows the traffic-shaping control mechanism to separate traffic into individual flows and shape them differently"

is different. QoS wouldn't server gaming too well, as the buffering and high latencies would seriously impact first person shooters dramatically. Traffic shaping which limits the min/max of bandwidth used per port/application. Besides the true QoS would require it on both ends of the connection.

Anyway ... here

RE: D-Link GamerLounge with GameFuel

Elios — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 12:43:50 GMT

from what i know "gamefuel" isnt much more the QoS like what you can setup in a linux box

actuly - the 1000base you can get the same thing out of a Linksys WRT54GL + wrt-dd or just droping linux in old PC with 2 nics and using that as your router

D-Link GamerLounge with GameFuel

Tytus — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 08:04:44 GMT

I have one in the lab now, and have started wondering if anyone else has any experience testing it?

I'm wondering if there are any good tests for it (similar to what we are doing with Killer)
http://www.killernic.com/KillerNic/KillerStats.aspx

Anyone try this yet?

p.s. it does seem to work with Killer, but I can't tell if it adds anything yet: although I suspect it would if someone sitting next to me were downloading something or something...

I wish there was a white paper on GameFuel like we've published for Killer.

Tytus