Packet Shaping Software

[madman045]

Does anyone know of any free or trial packet shaping software?

Nearly all the solutions I have found so far are hardware & very expensive.

Its to monitor an ADSL connection on 2003 server used by remote users to connect to a terminal server as they are experiencing slow connections & disconnections.

SDSL is not an option at the moment due to its cost.

Thanks

[Moby-Dick]

packet shaping isn't for monitoring.

what do you actually want to look at.

Do you want to look at how much utilisation an ADSL line has ?

if you have a router that supports snmp then you'll like PRTG - its a windows port of the popular MRTG traffic grapher with a nice little front end. and its freeware for a single sensor.

http://www.paessler.com/prtg

[madman045]

I'm not with it today, a company that deals with Citrix based work has looked at the server & recommended packet shaping as a way of making better use of the poor 256 upload of adsl.

I will look into PRTG anyway as I have another use for that.

Any recommendations Moby?

Thanks

[Moby-Dick]

ok so you have a Server running terminal services(not citrix ? ) connected up via a dsl line.
How many external users are connected ?
what are they using the TS box for ( is it just for a single application or a whole desktop ? )

Packetshaping , or traffic shaping is a way of assigning priority to certain types of network traffic over and above other traffic.

Does the TS box has the DSL line all to its self or is it having to be shared with other system in the company ( mail / browsing / some numpty on itunes etc. )

The main software for traffic shaping that I know of is wondershaper , but thats a linux application - you'll need to run some form of extra gateway to your web connection to take advantage of it.
Clarkconnect has traffichsaping built in , so may make quite a nice little gateway box. There are probablym ore slimline , but less userfriendly implementations of wondershaper kicking around if you want a challenge.

[directhex]

past experience with linux's traffic shaping support (on 2.4 kernels) has been a bit wooly - when you say "64Kbit" to it, it tends to intepret as "sixtyish, you know, maybe, something like that anyway".

a BSD-based system will keep packets in line much better - try m0n0wall instead of clarkconnect

[Moby-Dick]

that was the one I was thinking off hexxey

I think m0n0wall will install on all sorts of odd devices like old nokia firewalls and other embedded hardware. Not having played with it I can't vouch for how easy ( or not as the case may be ) it is to pick up

Do you think that the traffic shaping will have much effect ? or will it simply just annoy exisitng users inside the network who'll find browsing a problem - For the cost of a second phone line a second DSL connection is possibly better.

[directhex]

that was the one I was thinking off hexxey

I think m0n0wall will install on all sorts of odd devices like old nokia firewalls and other embedded hardware. Not having played with it I can't vouch for how easy ( or not as the case may be ) it is to pick up

Do you think that the traffic shaping will have much effect ? or will it simply just annoy exisitng users inside the network who'll find browsing a problem - For the cost of a second phone line a second DSL connection is possibly better.

if it's for an office, and a lot of upstream is a neccessity, then i'd say bonded dsl or sdsl are a neccessity. shaping won't really work if it's all RDP traffic

[madman045]

They are using it to host a DB application, 15 users connect to it from two different offices over two VPNs which are always connected.

The server also hosts email (Vpop3) for the local office (2 users)

The internet connection is also used for surfing by the two users (very light) & thats it.

The other company has recommend packet shaping to help manage the available bandwidth & also see if something else is hogging it as they get slow downs / disconnects at certain points of the day.

The other issue (seperate to this) is that the DB application is Access 97 based, so 15 instances of Access running means the CPU is always at 100%.

As you have mentioned, is another ADSL line cheaper?

Thanks

[Moby-Dick]

having a dedicated dsl line for the VPN & a seperate one for mail & browsing would be a neat solution.

VPOP3 isn't the finest of mail servers , but it ought to be ok for 2 users ( unless they are getting lots and lots of attachments which would be better sent down the VPN )
You might also want to check things like Max MTU size to prevent blocking of unfragmented packets.

Thats not a good thing . Does the Db have a printing function ?

printing via terminal servies is notoriously inefficient as it sends data back to the client print in an uncompressed format - see what your server responces go like when users attempt to print a report for example.

btw - Access :barf: think about changing that asap

it may well be more that your connection issues are not badwidth related ?

do the 2 local users to the application get the same problems ?

[directhex]

access is not aq database, it's a toy for GCSE students. don't let anyone tell you otherwise

[OmarSantiago]

Download NetLimiter trialware and see if that helps. It's easy to configure, cheap and generates fairly detailed reports for what it does. For monitoring an ADSL connection it should fit the bill; unless you can build your own packetshaper buying a hardware solution is overkill.