dd-wrt router firmware QoS troubleshooting

Solution 1:

Though it only shapes outgoing traffic, you may find this excellent QoS script (mirror on pastebin) on Alex Rice's blog useful. It's been through several authors and incarnations. Be certain to set UPLINK as well as DEV correctly. For me the default value for DEV was incorrect, use the commented $(nvram get wan_ifname) instead, or the correct value from executing nvram get wan_iframe via SSH.

Also rather than using it, you may duplicate its configuration within the QoS GUI. You'll see it uses 1024:65535 for bulk traffic, with the other settings (80,22,3389, etc.) taking precendence. The script works well for me, and uses HFSC as recommended.

For instance: QoS set to WAN sends uplink traffic to downlink queue
Then realize this patch fails, because: Commands in rc_firewall script are not applied in QoS

You can workaround the problem with a script that executes after rc_firewall as noted in the ticket. I personally ended up enabling JFFS and placing the script with the fix in /jffs/etc/config/qos.ipup, same as mentioned.

I found it convenient to use KiTTY and WinSCP. You can SSH into the router with KiTTY to troubleshoot/verify as in the first ticket, and launch straight into file browsing on the router with the Start WinSCP command under KiTTY's top left icon. If this fails (router isn't running SFTP by default) you can enable FTP and connect manually, or simply add the file with Unix commands. Remember to set the owner execute permission on the script.

Solution 2:

I've noticed that a lot of people complain about QoS not working in DD-WRT, so they switch to Tomato instead. It works fine in Tomato (I use it). Tomato also has very nice graphs, which is useful for adjusting your QoS settings.

The downside to Tomato, compared to DD-WRT, is that it has less features, although there are a few mod builds which add certain things, like USB storage and OpenVPN. However, as Jeff Atwood mentioned below, it only supports Broadcom chipsets.

I use the Teddy Bear mod on my Netgear WNR3500L. I now use the Toastman mod, which is based on Teddy Bear, with more features and better default QoS classes which work for most people.

Personally, the only things that I am missing in Tomato is VLAN support and multi-SSID broadcast. (Toastman's mod has them both now, as well as Captive Portal for the secondary SSID).