I’ve spotted exactly as George describes, torch at our border router sees way 
more traffic than I see at the SM or the customer’s router.

I think one time I traced it to a Limelight Networks IP, but I didn’t write it 
down so I’m relying on memory so I could well be wrong.


From: George Skorup (Cyber Broadcasting) 
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 10:29 AM
To: [email protected] 
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 450SM sustain bucket throttle not working..

Yeah, it's almost always streaming video. Except the one guy I found running 
the "download manager" on his PC was doing USENET crap, probably porn, movies, 
music, etc.

It's fairly easy to see what's going on. For instance, a customer is on 6x1 
Canopy. There's 6Mbps RF downlink and 12Mbps Rx at AP's ethernet interface. 
This is all fine and dandy with Canopy because the AP controls the downlink 
traffic and doesn't put more on it than the QoS allows. Like Kurt, the first 
time I saw this, I was running the MT torch tool and thought the Canopy QoS was 
broken, too.

Now, for UBNT or really anything else where the CPE does the limiting, the AP 
is sending all that traffic to the CPE. So now you have to resort to policing 
at an upstream router which I'd rather not do to keep the load off of the 
little MT routers. Even still, after you do that, all that extra traffic is 
still coming in on the backhaul, so all you've done is moved the problem, which 
helps relieve the AP stress, but it still sucks to have to take on double the 
traffic. You can move the limiting all the way to your border(s), but that 
extra traffic is still taking up bandwidth somewhere.


On 4/27/2015 9:48 AM, Chuck McCown wrote:

  I haven’t been following this thread closely, but has anyone identified the 
traffic?

  From: Ken Hohhof 
  Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 8:46 AM
  To: [email protected] 
  Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 450SM sustain bucket throttle not working..

  If we could get Procera to create a signature for this type of behavior, then 
we could create a rule to restrict this traffic to some percentage less than 
50% of the subscriber’s speed tier.  This would perhaps have several desirable 
results:

  - if the CDN algorithm aims to oversubscribe the customer’s pipe by 2X, then 
making the pipe look 0.5X as small should counteract that

  - I would actually set it lower than 50%, the objective to have the customer 
say “XYZ service sucks” and complain to them or stop using them, rather than 
“my Internet sucks”

  - if we can pool our information about who is doing this (not just the CDN 
but the content provider paying them), we could complain directly to them, and 
if necessary take the position that blocking or throttling their traffic would 
be reasonable network management and allowable under net neutrality rules, 
since they are in effect attacking our network with a flood of traffic beyond 
what the customer has subscribed to

  Another approach would be to rate limit this traffic with a queue that has a 
very large buffer, introducing latency rather than packet loss, hoping that 
their algorithm recognizes late ACKs as a sign of congestion and will back off 
the sending rate.  But when I asked Simon about buffer size in Procera, my 
understanding was that it’s more of a traffic policing box than a shaping box.


  From: Wireless Admin 
  Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 9:08 AM
  To: [email protected] 
  Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 450SM sustain bucket throttle not working..

  Ken,

  Your assessment of the problem is exactly correct.  I was going to compare it 
tor DoS as you did here.  I don’t see an easy fix for this.

   

  Steve

   


------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  From: Af [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof
  Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 10:00 AM
  To: [email protected]
  Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 450SM sustain bucket throttle not working..

   

  I don’t think you’re understanding the situation that we are speculating is 
happening.

   

  He is using Cambium QoS.  However, he is seeing twice that amount of traffic 
destined to the customer, the SM is throwing half of it away (as it should), 
and as a result the customer’s service sucks.

   

  The problem is that the sender is not observing traditional congestion 
control, it is not backing off the sending rate when it sees high packet loss.

   

  That’s why I say it is similar to a DoS attack, someone sending far more 
traffic than the subscriber can receive.

   

   

  From: David Milholen 

  Sent: Monday, April 27, 2015 7:05 AM

  To: [email protected] 

  Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 450SM sustain bucket throttle not working..

   

  This is why we like setting the QOS at the subscriber. If I remember the 
cambium burst allocation ignores tcp and udp and work strictly on a token bit 
system.
  We do not receive these complaints. The only time I hear them is if we get 
overloaded at the backhaul link. 



  On 4/26/2015 8:58 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:

    I think George forgot the sarcasm emoticon.

     

    Also note that the problem here is the edge provider is sending more than 
the customer’s plan rate, ignoring TCP congestion control.  Not only does this 
consume Internet bandwidth over and above what the customer has subscribed to, 
it makes anything else the customer is trying to do on the Internet unusable 
because normal TCP is unusable with 50% packet loss.  It is not surprising the 
customer calls saying his Internet is slow.

     

    There’s a saying that comes to mind, involving a 5 pound bag.

     

     

    From: Faisal Imtiaz 

    Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2015 8:37 PM

    To: [email protected] 

    Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 450SM sustain bucket throttle not working..

     

    I see that the net neutrality is going to be the next boogieman under the 
bed for WISP's from now on...

     

    Please, please, please, correct your understanding on Net-Neutrality...

     

    It allows for one to traffic shape any and all kinds of traffic, as long as 
:-

       a) You declare your practice on your website.

       b) You DON"T DO IT specific to A SPECIFIC Network.. i.e. all VOIP, or 
all Video, or ALL Streaming..

         (applying a throttle on video to netflix while allowing Hulu would be 
considered a violation, but applying throttle to all types of video content is 
NOT !)

     

     

    :)

          

     

    Faisal Imtiaz
    Snappy Internet & Telecom
    7266 SW 48 Street
    Miami, FL 33155
    Tel: 305 663 5518 x 232

     

    Help-desk: (305)663-5518 Option 2 or Email: [email protected] 

     


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

      From: "George Skorup (Cyber Broadcasting)" mailto:[email protected]
      To: [email protected]
      Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2015 7:12:13 PM
      Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 450SM sustain bucket throttle not working..

       

      So you'd be purposely slowing down or blocking legitimate traffic from an 
edge provider to the customer? Oh no, net neutrality violation!

      So when everyone starts with the 4k streaming and we're selling the 
customer 20Mbps, then we have to take on 40Mbps because of this!?

      On 4/26/2015 5:58 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:

        I could justify declaring such traffic an attack and blocking the 
source as malicious.

         

        From: George Skorup (Cyber Broadcasting)

        Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2015 4:30 PM

        To: [email protected]

        Subject: Re: [AFMUG] 450SM sustain bucket throttle not working..

         

        Yep, I see this all the time and Ken is exactly right. The Canopy QoS 
works exactly as designed, the AP is definitely not delivering more than the 
sustained rate, but is instead discarding the extra 50%. I've tested this 
situation thoroughly. Stick a MT simple queue in at the upstream router and the 
2X rate traffic stops hitting the AP's ethernet interface, but it's still 
coming in at double the sustained rate farther upstream. There's no way around 
it except throwing bandwidth at it.

        This is CDN traffic. And when the customer thinks they can install one 
of those "internet download managers" to speed up their connection. The only 
thing it does is screw with TCP acks or window sizes or something which just 
puts more traffic on your transit just to be discarded at the congestion point 
(SM, queue, Procera, whatever). Gotta love it.

        You'd think with 70% of the internets being streaming video they'd 
think hmm.. maybe we can cut down on the peering congestion by NOT doing this 
crap. But no.

        On 4/26/2015 11:01 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:

          Sorry to answer a question with a question, but are you measuring at 
the SM, or at some upstream router?

           

          The reason I ask, is I have seen some CDN traffic that does not seem 
to follow traditional TCP congestion control.  It will send at twice the rate 
limit, causing 50% packet loss to its own traffic and everything else to that 
same subscriber.  Evidently some TCP geniuses have decided to use latency 
rather than packet loss as the indicator of congestion, and that the objective 
is goodput not throughput.  Works for last mile technologies like T1 and DSL 
with big buffers at the head end of the fixed speed serial connection, not so 
good with the type of rate limit queues we tend to use unless we can provision 
the queues with big buffers.

           

          Probably not your problem, but I thought I’d bring it up just in case.

           

          From: Kurt Fankhauser

          Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2015 10:50 AM

          To: [email protected]

          Subject: [AFMUG] 450SM sustain bucket throttle not working..

           

          I have a 450 SM that is rate limited in the SM to 1500kbps download 
on the sustain side. I noticed last night that this customer was pulling a 
steady almost 3mbps download for several hours on end. How is this possible? Is 
there a problem with 13.2 firmware? Its a 3.65ghz SM.

           

          see attached.






          Kurt Fankhauser

          Wavelinc Communications

          P.O. Box 126

          Bucyrus, OH 44820

          http://www.wavelinc.com

          tel. 419-562-6405

          fax. 419-617-0110

         

       

     

   

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