To: linux-wireless <linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: bulk vs. interactive bandwidth
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Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:35:15 +0100
From: Anders Eriksson <aeriksson@fastmail.fm>
Message-Id: <20080312213515.3C1A62DC045@tippex.mynet.homeunix.org> (sfid-20080312_213524_037255_9B6BEC6C)
Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org


Hi,

I have an issue which I can't really narrow down and it might be wlan related. 
It occurs both from a couple of PCs sharing a rt2500 to the internet, and a 
iwl3945 (no sharing) to the net.

The thing is that, normal sufing works ok. But, whenever there is a big 
download going on (say grabbing a kernel tarball), the interactive performace 
drops to pretty much nothing. Getting a prompt from ssh can take close to a 
minute. I'm thinking tha, tperhaps, there is someting buffer related which makes 
the wlan buffers "deeper than normal" and thus makes it hard for the 
interactive tcp's to crate room for themselves in the transmission queues or 
somehting.

I can't recall seeing this phenomenon over a wired connection (with roughly 
the same link bandwidths.)

Dows this sound at all familiar? If so, what's the cure? (I'd rather not go 
into traffic shaping...)

/Anders