Network-switch designs have evolved to support multimedia traffic through QOS (quality-of-service) techniques. But WLANs (wireless LANs) fundamentally differ from wired Ethernet in a number of ways ...

Network geeks among you may remember my article, “Linux Socket Filter: Sniffing Bytes over the Network”, in the June 2001 issue of LJ, regarding the use of the packet filter built inside the Linux ...

There are a few network situations where QoS appears to be set up correctly, and yet packet loss still occurs. These situations can be mystifying for those who don't understand the behavior of the ...

Also called "first-come, first served" (FCFS) queuing, FIFO is the simplest queuing method. Packets are placed into a single queue and serviced in the order they were received. Each packet is assigned ...

One of the useful features in new networking hardware is extra transmit queues, to give a latency advantage to outgoing audio and video packets. A new kernel feature lets device driver writers use ...

Active queue management (AQM) and congestion control form the backbone of modern network performance optimisation. By dynamically regulating queue lengths in routers, these techniques pre-empt ...

Bufferbloats—an amusing word for a less-than-delightful issue (we reported on these last year). A bufferbloat is the proliferation of more and more buffering of IP packets in routers, switches, modems ...