Bandwidth Throttling Evaluation Copy

[Steve Taylor]

Trying to validate Bandwidth Throttling. The amount of traffic being uploaded and download through FirstSpot is always the same no matter what I select through Dispatcher/Bandwidth Throttling. Firstspot is restarted after any throttling change.

Below I describe the network condfiguration and testing procedures used to evaluate your product. What am I doing wrong?

Network Configuration

Client attached to switch
Internal interface of FirstSport attached to same switch
Firstspot external interface attached directly to Microsoft ISA Firewall Server
FTP Server lives behind a firwall attached to same switch as the external interface of ISA Server.

Testing Procedure

Installed Netmeter on FirstSpot Server.
Single client anonymous logon

FTP to FTP Server as described above
Get 100 Mbyte File
Netmeter reports Max 385 KB/s
Upload/Download has a basic pattern of 378/255/25/30 KB/s

Portions of config.ini

[version]
version=Trial
versionDesc=2.1.11

; anonymous login
anonymous_login =ON

; Bandwidth Throttle Settings
[bw_throttle]
; Bandwidth Throttle Mode
bt_mode =3

; Overall Upload Limit (at least 20KB/s recommended)
bt_ul_limit =20

; Overall Download Limit (at least 20KB/s recommended)
bt_dl_limit =20

; low, medium and high definition
bt_low=100
bt_medium=50
bt_high=20
bt_drop_period=3

[alan]

Couple of things to try:

1) use standard IE to download. You should see the rates in the download dialog box. Also, install NetMeter in the client side.

2) try to use username/password mode (instead of anonymous mode)

Are you sure that there is no path other FirstSpot that the client can communicate with the FTP server?

If you still have problem, please post your debug log ( file firstspot_gw_srv_[timestamp].log under directory FirstSpot\log )
_________________
~ Patronsoft Limited ~

[Steve Taylor]

Installed Netmeter on the client

Test 1

Configured Firstspot Bandwidth Throttling to High - 20 KBytes/second
Log on set to Anonymous Logon
Used IE to download 100 MB zip file
Transfer rate was throttled at 20 KBytes/second

Test 2

Configured FirstSpot not to perform throttling
Log on set to Anonymous Logon
Used IE to download 100 MB zip file
Transfer rate 800 KBytes/second no throttling performed.

Observation

No matter what FirstSpot throttling rate is set to it will not throttle the FTP protocol.

Is the following conclusion correct?

Bandwidth throttling must only apply to the HTTP protocol.

Is there a misprint on the following Admin Screen?

FirstSpot Configuration Manager
Dispatcher Tool
bandwidth Throttling (global) section
Low (~100 Bytes/s)
should this be
Low (~100 KBytes/s)
is the K for Kilo missing from this section of the admin page?

[alan]

From your test, it looks like Bandwidth Throttling is working. FirstSpot Bandwidth Throttling features is used to throttle down the bandwidth so that a few users won't monopolize the bandwidth. It will work on FTP as well as HTTP.

So for test 1 : FirstSpot correctly limit the bandwidth to 20KBytes/s
test 2: FirstSpot does nothing. So the actual bandwidth is as high as the client can get.


And yes, it should be

Low (~100 KBytes/s)

It is a typo. We will fix it in the final version of v3. Thank you for the reminder.
_________________
~ Patronsoft Limited ~

[Steve Taylor]

I want to make sure I understand.

Bandwidth Throttling will only throttle HTTP traffic.

I could never throttle Windows FTP client traffic. I tested all Admin Throttle values. I tested anonymous and username/password modes.

[alan]

Bandwidth Throttling should work with FTP also.

Are you using IE FTP to download? There should be a transfer rate in the IE FTP download dialog box. So is that value not what you expect?
_________________
~ Patronsoft Limited ~