2018-01-30 10:40:13 +00:00
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===============
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Traffic Shaping
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===============
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Traffic shaping (also known as “packet shaping”) is the control of computer network
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traffic in order to optimize or guarantee performance, lower latency, and/or
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increase usable bandwidth by delaying packets that meet certain criteria. More
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specifically, traffic shaping is any action on a set of packets (often called a
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stream or a flow), which imposes additional delay on those packets such that they
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conform to some predetermined constraint (a contract or traffic profile).
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.. image:: images/traffic_shaping.png
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------------
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Introduction
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------------
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Traffic shaping within OPNsense is very flexible and is organized around pipes,
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queues and corresponding rules. The pipes define the allowed bandwidth, the queues
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can be used to set a weight within the pipe and finally the rules are used to apply
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the shaping to a certain package flow. The shaping rules are handled independently
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from the firewall rules and other settings.
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OPNsense traffic shaping is a reliable solution to limit bandwidth or prioritize
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traffic and can be combined with other functions such as captive portal or high
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availability (CARP).
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2018-11-08 19:59:18 +00:00
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Bandwidth limitations can be defined based upon the interface(s), IP source &
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2018-01-30 10:40:13 +00:00
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destination, direction of traffic (in/out) and port numbers (application).
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Available bandwidth can be shared evenly over all users, this allows for
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optimum performance at all times.
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Traffic can also be prioritized by adding queues and defining weights. Strictly
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speaking traffic is not really prioritized but applications with a higher weight can
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consume more bandwidth than others when the total available bandwidth is limited.
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The traffic shaper implementation uses IPFW and dummynet to offer a modern,
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reliable solution with a low cpu footprint.
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---------------
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Dummynet & ipfw
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---------------
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Dummynet operates by first using the firewall to classify packets and
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divide them into flows, using any match pattern that can be used in ipfw
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rules. Depending on local policies, a flow can contain packets for a
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single TCP connection, or from/to a given host, or entire subnet, or a
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protocol type, etc.
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Packets belonging to the same flow are then passed to either of two different
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objects, which implement the traffic regulation:
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pipe
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A pipe emulates a link with given bandwidth, propagation
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delay, queue size and packet loss rate. Packets are queued
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in front of the pipe as they come out from the classifier,
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and then transferred to the pipe according to the pipe's
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parameters.
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queue
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A queue is an abstraction used to implement the WF2Q+ (Worstcase Fair
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Weighted Fair Queueing) policy, which is an efficient variant of the
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WFQ policy. The queue associates a weight and a reference pipe to each
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flow, and then all backlogged (i.e., with packets queued) flows linked
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to the same pipe share the pipe's bandwidth proportionally to their
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weights. Note that weights are not priorities; a flow with a lower
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weight is still guaranteed to get its fraction of the bandwidth even if
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a flow with a higher weight is permanently backlogged.
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In practice, pipes can be used to set hard limits to the bandwidth that a
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flow can use, whereas queues can be used to determine how different flow
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share the available bandwidth.
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The shaping rules can be defined in the rules section of the traffic shaper.
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-------------
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Configuration
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-------------
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Read the how to, here: :doc:`how-tos/shaper`
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