After months or even years of working fairly flawlessly, my Cisco AnyConnect Mobility VPN client started to quit on startup. No message is shown, it just disappears. Somewhere there is some log file, but it doesn’t give too much away. Eventually I worked out that this issue relates to having Fiddler debugging proxy installed.
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Crashplan on Synology Diskstation – successfully setting QoS DSCP values to de-prioritize upload traffic
Way back in June 2012 I wrote about how you could set QoS (Quality of Service) DSCP values on Crashplan traffic on Windows, not by using the ineffective settings within Crashplan, but by using the group policy tool to tag traffic coming from the CrashplanService.exe process itself. In other words, I never found a way to make the Crashplan setting work, but the work around was pretty solid.
Earlier this year I acquired a Synology DS415Play diskstation, a decent NAS which could store the constant accumulation of photos, video clips and music, but I also installed the excellent Crashplan package from PCLoadLetter on it in ‘headless’ fashion using Scott Hanselman’s guide. Shortly afterwards I again needed to tag the crashplan traffic with a DSCP value so that the bulk upload traffic could be deprioritized to prevent it crippling my internet connection for other contending devices.
This post explores how to work around a serious bug (again!) in the Crashplan QoS settings, monitor the traffic via ssh and finally being able to successfully set the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) values for upload traffic for QoS. This then allows you de-prioritize Crashplan traffic at your router and so leave you internet connection fast and responsive for other clients and applications. See previous post of how to do this with a Draytek SOHO router.
Improve your sitecore log with realtime output and calling class
Sitecore uses the extensive log4net logging framework to handle the large volume of logging entries it generates. Sometimes vague log entries can leave you scratching around trying to find where they originated from. This post explores some simple steps to add useful detail to, and real-time viewing of, the Sitecore log.
QoS setup with Draytek 2920n router using DSCP packet header for low priority backup traffic.
In short
I spent far too long figuring out how to do this not share it. Running an online backup service (Crashplan) on my laptop was killing my network for everything else that was using it. I documented in a previous post how to set DSCP packet headers on Windows 7 for Crashplan. This post is about the next step of doing something actually useful in the router. Continue reading
De-prioritizing CrashPlan upload traffic with DSCP/TOS and QoS on Windows 7
Edit: See this post for a working practical config with a router that uses these settings.
Update 2013-05-30: The solution described at the end of this post is applicable to Windows 7 Professional and other non-‘home’ editions. Windows 7 Home Editions do not appear to have group policy editor (gpedit.msc) installed as standard.
I spent a fair amount of time trying to get to the bottom of this and so thought I would share my experiences, and partial successes. This post describes the issues I had trying to stop Crashplan’s upload traffic slowing down everything else on the network while utilising the available bandwidth for very large uploads. It talks about Differentiated Services Code Point or DSCP, QoS, Netmon packet monitor, Group Policy settings, and various unsuccessful fixes to the problem of Crashplans DSCP setting having no apparent effect either due to a bug or limitations of Windows 7. This post doesn’t discuss router configuration (to be part of a separate post), just Crashplan and DSCP on Windows 7.