Fair WAN link distribution?

Hi,

We’ve recently hit an issue where a single user can saturate our WAN up or downlink, at the expense of the rest of the users. Our office is generally small, and so we’d prefer to not create User/Guest/Manager groups to partition bandwidth. Instead, it would be great if the bandwidth allotment was fairly throttled based on use. That is, if 1 user in the office is uploading something, then they could consume a theoretical 100% of the WAN uplink. If a second user begins to upload something, the 1st user should be throttled back so that the link is shared 50/50 between the two users. As more users compete for resources, again, the resources are divvied up fairly.

How can I enable this behavior? Did I miss a setting in the WAN link configuration?

Thanks!

-Nick

I see where you are coming from, Nick. For now User Group Bandwidth Control is the best tool for this.

The User Group Bandwidth Control is divided in two sections - Group Bandwidth Reservation and Individual Bandwidth Limit. We don’t have to use Individual Bandwidth Limit. We can simply use Group Bandwidth Reservation for your purpose. This means if bandwidth is not scarce, a user can upload/download at full speed, but if every group is fighting for it, each group can still have a rightful portion of bandwidth.

It is not a perfect solution but it should ease your bandwidth hog issue a bit. Don’t forget to use Application QoS to make sure your time-sensitive app are prioritised above others.

Hi Kurt,

Thanks for the reply. The issue is when there’s 20-50 peers in the office (no higher level “mangers”.) No user’s connection needs are more important than the others, but when a single user saturates the uplink for our cable connection for instance, it adversely impacts everyone else.

Is this feature on the roadmap for future firmware releases?

Thanks!

-Nick

One last note:

Access to HTTP(80)/HTTPS(443) is vital to everyone in the office (most of their work is web based.) However, I’ve found that the big (kill the network connection for the rest of the office) issue is when one staff member uploads a large video to youtube. This is a part of their job, so we can’t block it, and we don’t want to throttle HTTP. Thoughts?

Thanks,

-Nick

Thanks for your elaboration Nick. The more I learn about what you are experiencing now, the more I think about it, the more I believe there is a mis-configuration.

I mean otherwise, if say I have only one single LAN user behind Peplink. I do a HTTP upload. Then I do a second HTTP upload. The first HTTP upload will be at full load whereas the second HTTP upload doesn’t get any bandwidth. That doesn’t make sense to me and certainly isn’t how Peplink handles it today.

Could you please submit a support ticket at http://www.peplink.com/contact/support/ with a copy of diagnostic report? Thanks.