[Asterisk-Users] Bandwidth: to seperate or not to seperate

[Derek Conniffe]

Hi everyone,

RE: Bandwidth.  We have an asterisk server sharing bandwidth with other 
[web] servers in cabinets that we rent in a large data-center and all is 
working fine.  But I'm concerned that web traffic could affect the VoIP 
quality (my tests so far haven't showed this [yet!].  Currently I'm 
running a server with Netfilter (iptables) between all the servers and 
the Internet with Forward rules and I'm also including a "wondershaper" 
type QoS ruleset with TC to priortise the outgoing VoIP traffic (I say 
outgoing because this is really the only thing I can shape on the 
connection as far as I can see).

My choice, going forward, is to either buy more bandwidth and magically 
implement better QoS or the other option is to bring in a separate patch 
cable, with separate bandwidth, and a different IP address range 
directly to the asterisk and dedicate bandwidth to it and it alone.

In a way the sharing of bandwidth with QoS would appear to be the better 
value option but I can't see that the TC QoS can really be up to the 
task (again partially this is because I can only control the outgoing 
traffic shaping - there is nothing I can do about the incoming traffic 
flooding the bandwidth).

But obviously the data center has fully operational bandwidth shaping to 
their clients (me!) - or bandwidth "throttling" might be the better 
description as they limit my bandwidth to what I buy from them so by 
buying the separate bandwidth I'd just be relying on their bandwidth 
shaping rather than trying to do it myself.

Does anyone out there know the correct answer to this?  I'm sure many 
people must have come up against this before?

Thanks for any help!

Derek

-- 
Derek Conniffe
Rivertower Ltd
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