Many routers and firewalls offer the ability to set rate limits per user by IP. On a congested network, simple rate limits are certainly much better than doing nothing at all. Rate limits will force a more orderly distribution of bandwidth; however, if you really want to stretch your bandwidth, and thus the number of users that can share a link, some form of dynamic fairness will outperform simple rate limits every time.
To visualize the point I’ll use the following analogy:
Suppose you ran an emergency room in a small town of several hundred people. In order to allocate emergency room resources, you decide to allocate 1 hour, in each 24 hour day, for each person in the town to come to the emergency room. So essentially you have double/triple booked every hour in the day, and scheduled everybody regardless of whether or not they have a medical emergency. You also must hope that people will hold off on their emergency until their allotted time slot. I suppose you can see the absurdity in this model? Obviously an emergency room must take cases as they come in, and when things are busy, a screening nurse will decide who gets priority – most likely the sickest first.
Dividing up your bandwidth equally between all your users with some form of rate limit per user, although not exactly the same as our emergency room analogy, makes about as much sense.
The two methods used in the simple set rate limit model are to equally divide the bandwidth among users, or the more common, which is some form of over subscription.
So, for example, if you had 500 users sharing a 50 megabit trunk, you could:
1) Divide the 50 megabits equally, give all your users 100kbs, and thus if every user was on at the same time you would ensure that their sum total did not exceed 50 megabits.
The problem with this method is that 100kbs is a really slow connection – not much faster than dial up.
2) Oversubscribe, give them all 2 megabit caps – this is more typical. The assumption here is that on average not all users will be drawing their full allotment all the time, hence each user will get a reasonable speed most of the time.
This may work for a while, but as usage increases during busy times you will run into the rolling brown out. This is the term we use to describe the chaotic jerky slow network the typifies peak periods on an over subscribed network.
3) The smart thing to do is go ahead and set some sort of rate cap per user, perhaps 4 or 5 megabits, and combine that with something similar to our NetEqualizer technology.
Equalizing allows users to make use of all the bandwidth that is on the trunk and only slows down large streams (NOT the user) when the trunk is full. This follows more closely what the triage nurse does in the emergency room, and is far more effective at making good use of your Internet pipe.
Related Article using your router as a bandwidth controller
I believe this excerpt from the Resnet discussion group last year exemplifies the point:
You have stated your reservations, but I am still going to have to recommend the NetEqualizer. Carving up the bandwidth equally will mean that the user perception of the Internet connection will be poor even when you have bandwidth to spare. It makes more sense to have a device that can maximise the users perception of a connection. Here are some example scenarios.
NetEQ when utilization is low, and it is not doing anything:
User perception of Skype like services: Good
User perception of Netflix like services: Good
User perception of large file downloads: Good
User perception of “ajaxie” webpages that constantly update some doodad on the page: Good
User Perception of games: Good
Equally allocated bandwidth when utilization is low:
User perception of Skype like services: OK as long as the user is not doing anything else.
User perception of Netflix like services: OK as long as long as the user is not doing anything else.
User perception of large file downloads: Slow all of the time regardless of where the user is downloading the file from.
User perception of “ajaxie” webpages that constantly update some doodad on the page: OK
User perception of games: OK as long as the user is not doing anything else. That is until the game needs to download custom content from a server, then the user has to wait to enter the next round because of the hard rate limit.
NetEQ when utilization is high and penalizing the top flows:
User perception of Skype like services: Good
User perception of Netflix like services: Good – The caching bar at the bottom should be slightly delayed, but the video shouldn’t skip. The user is unlikely to notice.
User perception of large file downloads: Good – The file is delayed a bit, but will still download relatively quickly compared to a hard bandwidth cap. The user is unlikely to notice.
User perception of “ajaxie” webpages that constantly update some doodad on the page: Good
User perception of games: Good – downloading content between rounds might be a tiny bit slower, but fast compared to a hard rate limit.
Equally allocated bandwidth when utilization is high:
User perception of Skype like services: OK as long as the user is not doing anything else.
User perception of Netflix like services: OK as long as long as the user is not doing anything else.
User perception of large file downloads: Slow all of the time regardless of where the user is downloading the file from.
User perception of “ajaxie” webpages that constantly update some doodad on the page: OK as long as the user is not doing anything else.
User perception of games: OK as long as the user is not doing anything else. That is until the game needs to download custom content from a server, then the user has to wait to enter the next round because of the hard rate limit.
As far as the P2P thing is concerned, while I too realized that theoretically P2P would be favored, in practice it wasn’t really noticeable. If you wish, you can use connection limits to deal with this.
One last thing to note: On Obama’s Inauguration Day, the NetEQ at PLU was able to tame the ridiculous number of live streams of the event without me intervening to change settings. The only problems reported turned out to be bandwidth problems on the other end.
I hope you find this useful.
Network Engineer
Information & Technology Services
Pacific Lutheran University
NetEqualizer News Blog 
Why is the Internet Access in My Hotel So Slow?
April 28, 2012 — netequalizerThe last several times I have stayed in Ireland and London, my wireless Internet became so horrific in the evening hours that I ended up walking down the street to work at the local Internet cafe. I’ll admit that hotel Internet service is hit or miss – sometimes it is fine , and other times it is terrible. Why does this happen?
To start to understand why slow Internet service persists at many hotels you must understand the business model.
Most hotel chains are run by Real Estate and Management type companies, they do not know the intricacies of wireless networks any more than they can fix a broken U-Joint on the hotel airport van. Hence, they hire out their IT – both for implementation and design consulting. The marching orders to their IT consultant is usually to build a system that generates revenue for the hotel. How can we charge for this service? The big cash cow for the hotel industry used to be the phone system, and then with advent of cell phones that went away. Then it was On-Demand Movies (mostly porn) , and that is fading fast. Competing on great free Internet service between operators has not been a priority. However, even with concessions to this model of business, there is no reason why it cannot be solved.
There are a multitude of reasons that Internet service can gridlock in a hotel, sometimes it is wireless interference, but by far the most common reason is too many users trying to watch video during peak times (maybe a direct result of pay on demand movies). When this happens you get the rolling brown out. The service works for 30 seconds or so, duping you into thinking you can send an e-mail or finish a transaction; but just you as you submit your request, you notice everything is stuck, with no progress messages in the lower corner of your browser. And then, you get an HTTP time out. Wait perhaps 30 seconds, and all of a sudden things clear up and seem normal only to repeat again .
The simple solution for this gridlock problem is to use a dynamic fairness device such as our NetEqualizer. Many operators take the first step in bandwidth control and use their routers to enforcing fixed rate limits per customer, however this will only provide some temporary relief and will not work in many cases.
The next time you experience the rolling brown out, send the hotel a link to this blog article (if you can get the email out). The hotels that we have implemented our solution at are doing cartwheels down the street and we’d be happy to share their stories with anybody who inquires.
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