MX-84 WAN Bandwidth Limit

[pumrum]

I'm trying to limit the aggregate WAN traffic on my MX-84 to 40 mbps down, 5 mbps up. I converted this to roughly 5 Mb/s and 0.625 Mb/s respectively. I put those values into the SD-WAN & traffic shaping Uplink configuration for WAN1. However, I am still able to far exceed those limits.

Configuration:

Speed Test:

I'm not looking to do a per-device limit, and I'm really hoping to avoid any fancy traffic shaping rules if at all possible. According to the Meraki docs (source😞

Uplink bandwidth settings

This option allows you to configure the upload and download bandwidth of the uplinks. This information is needed for traffic load balancing between the active WAN / Internet ports as well as for limiting upload and download traffic through the WAN ports. You can configure WAN 1, WAN 2, and the cellular uplink individually. To configure specific upload and download bandwidths for a particular uplink, click the details button next to that uplink's bandwidth slider.

Am I misinterpreting the usage of that screen?

Current version: MX 13.33

CONFIG Up to date

Thanks!

[NolanHerring]

I've testing this in my lab and if I set the WAN 1 to 7Mbps up and down, it does limit it when I do speedtests out to the Internet. So it works for me.

However, I'm a little confused as to why your limiting it to 5down/0.625up because that is terribly slow. That would cause 'all' traffic to go out at those speeds, which would mean its basically unusable.

Your pipe appears to be 100down/10up, if you put a cap on WAN1 at 40down/5up then it 'should' work.

Are you utilizing the other 60 down/ 5 up in some other way? Otherwise I fear that its going to sit there unused no?

[NolanHerring]

Just realized where you got your numbers from.

Your confusing Mbps and MB/s

The dashboard using Mbps (so if you put 40 for 40Mbps, you'll get that). 40Mbps = 5MB/s which is confusing on the dashboard. They should really just put Mbps instead of Mb/s.

*EDIT - So what you want to do is put 40 for download and 5 for upload. Hit save.

[PhilipDAth]

@NolanHerring the screen shots show everything in mbps, and there should be a roughly a difference of 10 fold in the performance test if they were mixed up.

@pumrum is their any chance you have a second WAN link connected?  Is the Internet circuit definately plugged into Internet1/WAN1?

Are you sure this speedtest was from a device plugged directly into the MX?  It wasn't using WiFi to the ISP router or anything like that?

[NolanHerring]

Correct Phil, however I think he is under the impression its bytes not bits. Putting 5 there represents 40 Mbps because 5MB/s does. He needs to put 40 to get 40 Mbps is what I was getting at. The lower case 'b' makes the difference, but they should just replace the '/' with the letter 'p' so its not confusing ^_^

[pumrum]

Thanks everyone for the notes and suggestions. To add to my OP and answer your questions:

1. Yes, my WAN connection is capable of 100/10 mbps down/up, but this MX is sharing that pipe with another network, and I need to limit the aggregate traffic through the MX to roughly 40/5. The other 60/5 will be consumed by the second network.
2. Yes, there is only one WAN connected. It is hard-wired directly to the Internet connection which is limited to roughly 100/10. There is nothing connected to the WAN2 port
3. All testing was done using a laptop directly connected via Cat6a to the MX-84. WiFi radio is turned off
4. I initially tried putting 40/5 into the dashboard config, and when that didn't work I thought perhaps Meraki was interpreting "Mb/s" as megabytes per second (as Google does) instead of megabits per second. For this reason, I posted the more restrictive config in case my intuition was correct. I have since switched it back to 40/5 Mbps, but am still seeing the MX using the full 100/10
5. I ran the throughput test on Meraki dashboard and it comes back consistently 67.3 Mbps
6. I tried rebooting the MX appliance, but the results did not change
7. I realize I am on an older software version 13.33 (I have not yet been able to coordinate an upgrade window) - but I didn't see anything relevant in the release notes (for whatever little that's ever worth). I will upgrade as soon as practical to rule that out

I'm notorious for missing the obvious, so I figured maybe someone knew of a setting I have to check to enable the traffic shaping. I've poked around the dashboard and documentation for a few hours, but haven't been able to find it. If not, I'll open a help ticket and post the results here.

Thanks again for being so responsive - hope everyone is having a great start to the new year!

[wey2go]

What if you apply a traffic shaping rules with custom expressions to limit the bandwidth to the desired level? That way, not too much fancy traffic shaping rules are required.

[pumrum]

Thanks, I'll take a look at that and see if it does what I need. I always try to find the simplest answer to what should be a simple problem, but I'm happy to try anything at this point 🙂

I have an MX-100 with a similar setup but a bigger pipe and I'm seeing the same issue. The MX-100 has a (roughly) 290/270 down/up pipe. I tried restricting it to 100/50 down/up for kicks.... but same results: a laptop directly connected to the MX (no wifi anywhere on the network, only one WAN connected) and I'm still seeing the laptop push full boat through. This isn't just speedtest.net, I also tried transferring data across the SD-WAN via SCP, as well as across the open Internet to a public SFTP.

I'll fiddle a bit, but I'm at the point where I may just kick it over to the help desk. I will keep this thread updated with what I hear. Thanks everyone for the responses.

[NolanHerring]

Shot in the dark here but have you tried testing while not directly connected to the MX?

Also, your client isn't by any chance white listed?

[pumrum]

I've tried directly connected to the MX with Cat6a, connected to an MS-225-24P with Cat6a which is connected to the MX with Cat6a, and also via WiFi to an MR53 which is connected to the MX with Cat6a. I checked the device policy for the clients I'm using for testing, and they're all "Normal." I don't recall ever using the whitelist feature.

Using this as an idea for something to try, I did create a Group Policy, and configured only the bandwidth limit. I initially set it to 10240 Kb/s (no consistency in the units, hrmm) for my iPhone 8 which is connected iPhone>MR>MX>Internet. Voi La! iPhone is limited to 10mbps. I guess this proves that at least my Meraki kit is able to limit bandwidth, but it doesn't solve my issue for two reasons:

1) This seems to be a per-device limit, not an aggregate link limit (for example 10 devices could soak the entire 100mbps, and I want to limit the aggregate to 50)

2) I haven't found a way to apply this policy to wired devices, only WiFi (and per-SSID at that, which is slightly annoying but workable)

I'll keep poking. Thanks for the continued ideas

[wey2go]

Ran a test with my own network here.

MX84 Firmware 13.36

WAN is 400mbps/400mbps

Client PC I use for testing on USB-C connected ethernet port.

First test with Uplink configuration set at 400 Mbps on the dashboard:

Speedtest: 2ms ping, 170Mbps download, 363Mbps upload

2nd test with Uplink configuration set at "down" 100Mb/s and "up" 25Mb/s on dashboard using "detail:

Speedtest: 1ms ping, 90Mbps download, 33Mbps upload

3rd test with Uplink configuration set at 50 Mbps on dashboard:

Speedtest: 1ms ping, 33Mbps download, 88Mbps upload

So, I can probably conclude that the "Uplink configuration" work to some extend to the speed limit as configured in the dashboard even though you may have a higher bandwidth WAN uplink.

[Happiman]

To me bandwidth limiting through Uplink configuration never worked. The Meraki Supported mentioned it was meant for load-balancing. 

You will have use traffic shaping on other devices.