help with pf

[LukeD at pobox.com]

On Sun, 3 Apr 2005, Brian John wrote:

> altq on $ext_if priq
> queue mail priority 13
> queue ssh priority 12
> queue web priority 14

I see one syntactical thing you missed.
You have to define your child queues in your altq declaration.  Something 
like:
altq on $ext_if priq queue {mail, ssh, web}

Also, after you get the syntax right, unless the maximum bandwidth of your 
outside line is the same as the maximum bandwidth of your network card 
(does this ever happen?) you're going to want to use the "bandwidth" 
keyword in that declaration also, and pick a proper value for it. Picking 
the right bandwidth value seems to be an art form that requires a lot of 
trial and error and liberal use of "pfctl -vvs queue"

If traffic shaping isn't working and your queues are always empty, then 
the number is too high.  If the queues are filling up and dropping too 
many packets, then either the number is too low or you're just generating 
more traffic than you can handle well.

Luke Dean