Industry Forums > Wireless Service Providers > What software do you use to manage your connection speeds?

What software do you use to manage your connection speeds?

Mikrotik all of the way!

reply to treichhart
Most of us will use the CPE software to limit at the customer end and then I personally use Mikrotik to shape at the core as well.

reply to treichhart
We use Azotel rather than the intense administration of using the CPE to throttle, then if we need to change it is a system wide change rather than going to each CPE to make changes
Azotel works system wide and can be set to individual as well
all from one interface.
--
Mitch
support@abetterwireless.com

The only thing is that the client radio will still broadcast at their connected rate until it hits your Azotel to throttle it down. You will control all download throughput over the air, but not the upload.

We use PPPOE which creates the queues in Mikrotik and limit the CPE also.

reply to treichhart
to elaborate on what Kiethb said.. when you limit the connections at the core you can easily saturate your backhaul links and access points whereas if you limit at each cpe then you can make the most effective use of bandwidth across your entire network

reply to treichhart
Yea, I limit at the CPE and use QOS at the core. That way no one decides to use the network as a super fast wan link to share files with the person up the road.

reply to treichhart
Currently we use Mikrotik & PPPoE with the simple queues set through the radius attributes - A number of routers are also able to do this as well.

I can see setting the speeds on the CPE being a good option as long as you are fairly small. I can't see that scaling well though.

A few years back we increased speed across the board for our lowest tiered customers from 512k to 768k. At that time I think we were at ~1k customers (100+ wireless, mostly DSL). I couldn't imagine having to log into 100+ radios and changing their speed tiers.. I simply changed one setting in the radius DB and was done.

PPPoE brings it's own set of issues to the table though.

reply to treichhart
well how to do you manage the bandwidth with pppoe settings?

Q. well how to do you manage the bandwidth with pppoe settings?

You mean like using Mikrotik to define the speed tiers and then let the Mikrotik assign the PPoE authenticated users to a specific speed tier?

reply to treichhart
yea I guess nevtxjustin because I haven't even got Mikrotik yet I am just researching how to do this.

reply to nevtxjustin
Obviously we had to at least once. Same with having to re-number our entire network (seeing this one coming again in the near future as we will be multi-homing and getting a /20 from arin). On wireless we don't see customers jumping around on speed tiers very often, but on the DSL side we probably do 2-3 changes daily but that is also 250+ customers vs 1400+ customers.

You are right though a network wide change is not often, but at what point do you say that you need something more centralized than doing it on the CPE - 50? 100? 500? 1k?. At some point management at the CPE is too time consuming (or too complex for your average installer) and or a record keeping nightmare. Same goes for using static IP's on the CPE. At a small scale though handling everything at the CPE is a viable solution, the 'breaking' point where management takes priority over finer granular control is different for everyone, for me it was at about 100 wireless and 600 dsl customers. At that time we were still doing Static & DHCP to *all* of our customers - DSL & wireless. All the control was done at the core routers by IP. If a customer wanted a different speed tier then they were assigned a static IP and a different set of policing policies were assigned to that IP.. Keeping track of who had what, where was just too much.

Again though, I'm not 'downing' the use of throttling - or anything else at the CPE - there is a clear advantage of doing so as you have much more definite granular control per customer. The big downside I see (with most CPE) is being able to scale such a system, keep it in order and to keep it simple enough that you can easily train someone who has 0 networking background to be able to handle even simple changes.

It's not hard to design a system such as I have that allows my CSR's to handle non-pays, disconnects and speed tier changes all from a web interface. Which in turn is all handled through radius & pppoe. The CSR's do not need to know anything about the customers equipment, all they need is the customers telephone number or name to look their account up.

PPPoE is not the end all solution, I have had my share of headaches with it. MTU issues have been a thorn in my side and one of the biggest issues I've had with Mikrotik.

reply to treichhart

reply to treichhart
What about a compromise?

No limiting at CPE, neither at the Core, since both methods have their cons.

-You can set queue limits at every AP.
(if u use MT or any other router that is capable of setting queues).
You can do it with pppoe or without it, depends on your design.

This way backhauls wont be compromised from an offensive upload. The only way that will compromise only the AP is a broadcast storm (or a virus/worm) from a client- that doesn't happen usually, and can be tracked down easily, since it will compromise only the AP that the offensive client is connected.

NOTE:
Even if you set the limit on CPE, a broadcasting storm or uncontrolled upload by a virus or worm can take down the AP, because at 512kbps upload limit it can send thousands of packets per seconds and take the AP down, even if the bandwidth is only 512kbps (or even 256).

I don't see any good reason that would make your network safer if you limit at the CPE. If you fear that clients of the same AP are able to communicate to each other with unlimited speed - 'client isolation' which every AP has prevents that, users will have to go through AP(where they will be limited) to reach the other user.

reply to treichhart
Client isolation with PPPoE and mikrotik routers help quite a bit. I think it is a given in which every POP should have a router. We try to let the AP do AP stuff and let a router at the bottom do the ques and other such functions.

reply to Rhaas

reply to j2sw

reply to treichhart
Part of the reason we NAT at the customer is to prevent broadcast storms. So that is a non issue for us. We also do not allow interclient on AP's (Calea, and speed control reasons)

For shaping we do that at the AP and with newer clients at the CPE. My plan is to do this at the head end and at the client at some point. I just need to get the MT box ready/programmed for it, and disable some things on my other core router.

Ideally, shaping at the head end and CPE will keep your wireless network running at it's best though.

reply to treichhart
Im with Rhaas on this one. PPPoE with control at the core, keeping the CPE configs simple.

We definitely don't allow inter-client communications without going thru our core router and therefore the simple queues. PPPoE allows for great client isolation. MTU issues were never a huge concern, only recently did I have to think about MTU when I converted to MPLS with VPLS tunneling.

To disconnect a user I do what Rhaas does sorta. Put the customer in a group that cant surf the public Internet, redirects traffic to a disconnection notice page, but still allows the customer to go to our site and send emails to us.