On Mon, 28 Aug 2006 08:54:51 -0400, you wrote:

>What BW up and down speed did you set your VoIP and DNS pipes to?  I
>understand VoIP can get by with around 80 kbs.  Since DNS packets are so
>small, maybe you don't need more then 80kps for that either?

I measured Vonage using my Motorola VT2442 at 96Kb/s.  I tried setting it to
32Kb/s with no luck and did not pursue the matter.  The original low latency
game traffic my setup was for was under 16Kb/s.  Given my usage, DNS traffic was
never really an issue.

I am going to give you numbers as apply to my current 1544/384 ADSL line.
Originally I had 768/768 SDSL.  Incidentally, I just finished with painful week
of arguing with Earthlink every day do to connection issues that turned out to
be caused by a high open line.  My connection has been flawless since a lineman
came out to place my service on a different pair.

My incoming and outgoing low latency pipes are 144 Kb/s (1.5 x 96 KB/s based on
the VOIP traffic which is by far the largest) and each has a single queue.  All
DNS, VOIP, and latency sensitive game traffic use these two queues.

All other traffic uses an incoming or outgoing pipe with associated priority
queues and a bandwidth of 1024/128 Kb/s.  Anything higher then this caused
packet loss on my VOIP connection.  My measured total throughput on my ADSL was
about 1280/320 Kb/s.

Notice that the total traffic in my low latency pipes never exceeds the
bandwidth assigned to them and the total of my bulk traffic plus the low latency
traffic (almost all VOIP) never exceeds my connection throuput.

>You said you only used one queue.  What queue did you use for these two
>pipes?  I may want to use the same type of queue as you did.  Did you queue
>on the static IP address of your VoIP adapter, because VoIP port numbers
>vary quite a bit and it is difficult to know what VoIP port numbers to use.

I used one queue for each of the low latency pipes but only because I thought I
might want to assign priorities to different types of low latency traffic later
which I never did.  If you direct the rules toward the pipes themselves, I would
assume you do not need the queues although I never tried it.

My VOIP rules use the static LAN IP address of my VOIP adapter although I could
have used DHCP.  I never needed to open or redirect any ports as it maintains
its own outgoing connection and renews it continuously.  This appears to make it
very NAT friendly.

Keep in mind that all of my outgoing firewall and traffic shaping rules are
assigned to my LAN interface while incoming rules are assigned to my WAN
interface.  Rules on an outgoing interface never worked for me although
apparently other users have not had this problem.

I am currently using pfsense with my m0n0wall system as a backup because the
ALTQ traffic shaper allows my bulk queues to borrow excess bandwidth from my low
latency ones.  Actually this is inaccurate being the reverse but I see no need
to discuss it on the m0n0wall list unless someone is really interested in it. :)
I set it up without the wizard though so unless you are comfortable with ALTQs
complexity I would not recommend it.  The results between the two systems are
very similar except I get slightly better bulk performance with pfsense do to
ALTQ.