Pre-Sales - Rate Limiting

[sporkman]

Hello all,
I wonder if these switches might be a good match for some more "hybrid" applications.
We have a building where we supply lots of wired access and we also have a half dozen APs on the roof. Obviously consolidating the AP power supplies into one box would be handy, but we're also outgrowing the old Cisco that only has two GigE ports. We use old 3550 units here and they do basic rate-limiting "well enough" for customers that want sub-100Mb/s connections.


I need to buy something this week to at least hang off one of the GigE ports on the Cisco to feed a new UBNT nanobeam ac on the roof (replacing a powerbridge). I'd like to support a company that's making what seems like a nice product, but the rate-limiting thing is my main interest at the moment and I'm not yet finding a user manual. Can anyone speak to the granularity of the rate-limiting and what (if any) QoS options go along with that (ie: will it kill voip when the customer bursts?)?

[petecarlson]

Thats a good question. They have an RX limit and TX limit setting, but I haven't tested it yet.

[sirhc]

The port limiting works GREAT

[sporkman]

The port limiting works GREAT

Care to elaborate? :)

[sirhc]

The port limiting works GREAT

Care to elaborate? :)

You go to the Ports Tab and enter an ingress or egress speed for each port you want to limit then click save and apply and it actually works as intended (great)???

We tried to get the switch do a reach around but all of those software routines failed and had bugs giving the user an STD so we abandoned that idea?

Not sure what else there is to elaborate on other than it works?

[sporkman]

Well, in the Cisco world, you have policing, shaping, limiting, etc. Some are good, some are bad. "Limiting" I think is the harsh one. If you have a customer limited at say, 20Mb/s and they hit that limit and also happen to be using VoIP, what gets dropped is quite random. It might be a few packets from Joan's animated cat gif on Facebook or it might be a bunch of packets from Bob the CEO's conference call.

I should also note that NONE of the options I've found in Cisco-land to do a simple "I want to sell this customer XYZ Mb/s" limit are in any way obvious, simple, easy or fun. There are caveats, disclaimers, bugs and design limitations left and right. Those products can be minefields sometimes when you want to just do something "simple".

I am still a bit surprised you're having to work with customers so much on price - if these switches have the features touted and the turnaround on software fixes is as rapid as it appears you should jack your prices up. :) As a non "W" ISP employee for many years, I understand thin margins and all, but damn, let's not all assume Ubiquiti pricing is some guideline. There's lots of reasons that stuff is cheap...

[sirhc]

What you are talking about now is more QOS which is on the firmware Road Map for some version of v1.3.X, probably late summer or fall. The switch core is capable of QOS we are just not using it yet.

[sporkman]

Yep. And also what is the method for limiting? Is it tail drop, random, etc.?

Better question - my understanding is you actually run a WISP, do you have throttled users or APs out there without complaints? That's really all I need to know. :)

[sirhc]

tail drop is the method used by the switch.

We limit at the head end and we do not implement QOS for end users, if they are using VOIP and are commercial we recommend QOS be setup on their router.

If it is a residential not really any QOS is implemented but if we do get a complaint we tell them to either yell at Junior to stop downloading while they are on the phone or we can implement a router for them with QOS but we do not get many residential complaints about VOIP issues.

I have VOIP at my house and all my businesses and use SKYPE all day long at Netlinx/RF Armor/Netonix and at home which is basically VOIP and both locations (Netonix/Rf Armor and my house) are just using the UBNT CPE as the NAT router and I have no issues with VOIP calls at all.

Now we do not allow any customer commercial or residential to have Layer 2 access to my network and each AP is in it's own VLAN. When we implemented this architecture several years ago all VOIP complaints stopped.

This is how all my towers look
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=452

If you are a residential Customer your COE is in NAT Router mode and you do not have access to even try and login into it (Access control lists).

If you are a commercial customer then your CPE is in Router mode and your valid default gateway is on the radio and the radio has a static route to the tower router then it rides OSPF around the rings and we use BGP on the edges.
Every device is in it's own subnet /30 or such.

Even devices assigned an invalid address are in a subnet of their own, this cuts down on arps and such.

[soundwavz]

how do you remove the limiting? I deleted the data I had in the limiting fields, however when hovering over the blank field it shows 10Mbps / 1.5 Kb/s, what does that mean?