Networking - i want to prioritise traffic on a sky router without QoS

Question

I have the timeless issue of being the 'gamer' in a shared house on a highly contentious Sky internet connection and i want to do something about it!

(can't come home from a hard day at work and play my favourite game online because my ping is >300 RAGE :p )

currently my gaming PC is connected via Ethernet to the wireless router, however the router can be getting used by up to 4 other people - up to 9 devices! (smartphones, second PC / laptop etc)

So the problem: the buzz on google is to use something called QoS which prioritises certain traffic

However i am with Sky and using their router (a black DG834Gv3?) and this router does not have QoS on its configuration pages.

an obvious solution would be to buy a router that supports QoS, but apparently sky is funny with using third party routers to connect to their service? so i guess this isn't an option.. >.<

So what can i do? i had an idea but it could be gibberish as im not an expert when it comes to network topology so it would be good to hear your thoughts / ideas on how to solve this problem.

Using this architecture I’m thinking that i could either throttle all the wireless connections at the wireless router level, or prioritise Ethernet traffic over the wireless router traffic at the switch level, while still connecting to the internet using Sky's proprietary router. let me know what you think!

Answer 1

Yeah, Sky are both stupid and evil and they're screwing you.

You need one of

• a bridge (as opposed to a router) that does IP QoS. That's a mess and I bet you're not going to find one for the home.
• reconfigure your Sky router to add a static route for a QoS router. I bet you can't do this; Sky apparently removed the feature from their routers a while back.
• daisy chain a second router, accept double-NAT, and break a load of network protocols. E.g. you won't be able to act as host for some online games. I strongly recommend against double-NAT, it's just going to cause more contentiousness :-).

OR probably the only practical one

• a QoS router which has been specifically designed to replace the current generation of Sky routers, and do whatever magic handshakes they're currently using to lock you out. And hope they don't change it again. This will also make support a bit of a hassle (they'll make you use the Sky router if you need to report any issue with the line).

One of the Sky modem<->router protocol is something called "MER", at least as of last year.

See for example http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-router/47658-recommended-router-replace-default-sky-routers-3.html

Answer 2

If you have a router that supports QoS hopefully it will be able to clone the MAC address of the PC connected to it. Do that before you connect to your wireless router, then your ISP never knows that you aren't connecting with the current PC. Unless you get a rather expensive switch you will not be able to do much in the way of prioritizing wired traffic. You may also consider asking to have their device placed in bridged mode so it does not give out a private IP be sure that you are getting a public IP address from their router.

Answer 3

In your diagram, connect your Gaming PC to the wireless router with the QOS instead of the switch so it can allocate the bandwidth correctly as it then sees ALL the traffic and can give yours the appropriate priority. You may then be able to dispense with the switch altogether as most wireless routers have an inbuilt switch.

First check with all the other devices disconnected if you will actually get better ping values that you are happy with, or if the bottleneck is further up the line where you don't have control over it. No point in wasting your time if implementing a complicated setup doesn't solve the underlying problem.