How to: Manage Traffic Using Tomato and QoS

“If you’re using Tomato firmware on your router, you can help
reign in the chaos using QoS, or Quality of Service. Your typical
network pushes around several different types of traffic. There is
Web browsing (HTTP), for example, but there may also be gaming, and
VoIP, and FTP, and P2P data, such as BitTorrent. But not all
traffic is created equal–some things, including gaming and VoIP,
need minimum delays, whereas file transfers do not require the same
priority.

“Priority” is what QoS is all about–creating a fast lane, a
slow lane, and possibly additional lanes in between for your
network traffic. This way, a torrent download does not slow Web
browsing to a crawl, for example.

“In and out

“Traffic flows in two directions–into your network from the
Internet and out to the Internet from your network. The router, of
course, sits at the intersection. QoS is really only effective on
outgoing traffic–that is, data from your network headed to the
Internet. That’s ok, because this is the traffic you need to manage
to keep your network from getting bogged down.

“Although Tomato does provide settings for managing incoming
traffic, you cannot really expect reliable results from incoming
QoS. The rate of inbound traffic is controlled by your ISP and
there isn’t much the router can do to change that. While outbound
QoS can delay outgoing packets to conform to your rules, incoming
QoS can only throw away (not delay) incoming data, which produces
erratic and inefficient results.”

Complete
Story