If you ever worked with Mikrotik routers, you probably got used to 'simple queuing', a very simply manageable list of IP->speed rules. I guess other router OSes have something similar, for those who have never seen any, I link a screenshot: http://wiki.mikrotik.com/images/3/3d/Queue.jpg
Now, this concept is pretty easy and staightforward, and my boss (who started a mid-sized local ISP) was using this for shaping customer traffic ever since. Now we came to a point where mikrotik simple queues no longer scale, mostly because of 3 reasons:
- any machine we tried isn't capable to work with more than ~2500 rules, especially with speeds reaching above 300Mbit.
- the main problem - as the network is mostly wireless, we would like a tool that can automatically measure if there's some latency or packetloss happening somewhere, and prioritize/limit traffic so the wireless connection isn't stressed anymore.
- we would like to somehow effectively distribute spare bandwidth (esp. during nights) to users that will appreciate that, but holding the traffic aggregated to guaranteed speeds when there's peak.
I've gone through the obvious routing software (vyatta, bird,...), but found nothing interesting enough. I'm asking whether there's some free software with such capabilities; and if not, whether anyone here has some experience with those (expensive) Cisco/Juniper/Allot/similar QoS blackboxes and could refer if those can actually help me.
Thanks
e.