You hear it all the time, “Buy our internet service because we have the fastest speeds ever!!!” While there is some truth to that, speed alone isn’t the only thing you need. You need a way to tell your router that Streaming TV is very important, and I would like to make that my priority when I am online doing something else at the same time.

 

What you are doing here is improving the quality of the internet service (bandwidth) coming into your home. We call this managing the internets’ QoS or Quality of Service.

 

To understand QoS, look no further than a grocery store fruit section. Imagine the bandwidth as the total number of bins available to stock the fruit. Now imagine the fruit as different applications and the person who stocks the fruit in the separate bins is the router.

 

The stock person is indifferent to any particular order of fruit coming in daily. No favorites for any kind of fruit setup.  If apples come in, they get stocked in front. If oranges come in, they get stocked in front of apples and so on and son on. Suppose you want apples every day, well they may be stored behind other fruit that just came in. If we let the stock person load the fruit any which way, over time, those apples you wanted daily will take time to find. Over time, it will get really bogged down and you will not be able to find anything easily.

 

Now what QoS does is say to the stock person, “I love apples and I want them daily”. From here on, the apples will be stored close-by as a favorite fruit (priority placement). You can now setup your most used or most requested fruits to be stored up front.

 

This is exactly how your home internet is setup. Let’s say you are streaming TV and your kids or roommate starts online gaming. Without QoS, your movie may start buffering or lagging. Your router doesn’t really care which one is more important because we never told it that we love Netflix more. When we configure QoS, we tell the router which applications are considered important. When all is quiet, internet will flow with ease. When everyone is home and online, the QoS stands ready to prioritize streaming TV for over gaming.

 

Additionally, the great thing about having a wifi range extender or wifi booster in your home, is that you will not need to configure them separately for QoS as they speak to the router and relay any special bandwidth priority your router has.

 

Click here to check out if your home could use the help of a wifi extender or wifi booster. [you can now link the first article you requested here]

 

 

 

 

PART TWO – CAN BE SEPARATE PAGE OR JUST CONTINUE, YOUR CHOICE.

 

 

 

Enabling Quality of Service on Your Router

 

It is near impossible to show you exactly what to do on your specific router as some have very granular tweaks that have to be made while others do the hard work for you. For this purpose, we will try to tackle the basics to get you started. It is very important to lookup your router’s manual prior to making any changes. With that said, here we go!

 

What are Your Goals?

• What do you want to accomplish?
• Not just favorite applications (i.e. streaming TV or audio) but perhaps you have a specific computer or laptop that you want to prioritize?
• Do you want to prioritize your Minecraft server or a Media server that you want to access easily from outside the home?
• As a tip, for home use, your priorities should be kept as simple as possible. No need to get too granular

 

What is Your Connection Speed?

• Firstly, make sure you are the only connection available online. Stop anything else that may be running and soaking up the bandwidth.
• Go to an online speed test website. We like to use speedtest.net. Click the “Begin Test” button.
  • NB: You should do this with an ethernet cable plugged to your computer. You can definitely just use wifi but make sure you read our article first on if your home should be using a wifi extender or wifi booster.
• Take your results to your router’s admin page. Keep in mind you may need to convert megabits (MB) to kilobits (KB) [basically multiply the result by 1000].
  • One thing of importance is that you set your router speed in the nest step about 90-95% of your full speed. This is helpful when the bandwidth is in full demand and your router will need a sliver of bandwidth to ensure smooth operations in the background.

 

Let’s Get the QoS Setup on Your Router

• After logging into your router admin page, you will want to goto the QoS settings page. This will most likely show in your menu items as QoS.
• To begin, enable or start your QoS service.
  • Ensure your port is selected to WAN
  • If your router requests a packet scheduler, select HTB
  • Your queuing discipline should be SFQ
  • You will see spaces to fill the download (or downlink) speed of your internet as well as its upload (or uplink) speed. Remember the conversion from MB to KB

 

The Need for Speed (to be prioritized)

• Newer routers make QoS very easy to configure. Some have boxes to identify what you would like to prioritize (streaming TV or audio, online gaming, VoIP & Instant Messaging). Simply pick your priority and move on.
• Some older routers may ask you for a percentage of bandwidth to allow.
• Prioritize by Service simply means you can specify ‘Netflix’ for example to be top priority.
• Your router may offer a Prioritize by Interface, which means giving priority to anyone connected via cable or those connected via wifi. (click here to see if your home will benefit from a wifi extender or wifi booster)
• You can also setup individual computers, laptops or devices separately so that they will be allowed priority over all others. This is done via your device IP Address.

 

Once you are done, the time to test it out and evaluate the results is now, to ensure all was done to your liking. Setting up QoS is not the easiest thing to do but if you take your time to do it once the first time, the payoff is nothing short of fantastic!!

 

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