Bandwidth Arbitrator - Common Problems and Solutions

Problem: My system Panics when I put a network load on it.

Solution: Change network cards see our supported list.

Problem: The bridge won't come up.

Solution: This is most common when one of your network cards is not recognized by Linux at boot up, try one of our supported cards.

Problem: I just loaded the arbitrator and was the only person on the system and was noticed I was getting Penalized.

Solution: Set a trunk size for your system, if you see the arbitrator adding a Penalty when your system is not busy then increase your trunk size parameter. For more advanced tuning read the tuning section in the user guide for ideas.

Problem: I was testing the Arbitrator before production using an FTP download, I set a limit for 100kbs but the actual throughput was way less.

Solution: The Arbitrator works via a feedback mechanism. It applies some penalty to your download to slow it down,perhaps more than needed, and then lets up. Single FTP downloads sometimes do not recover after the initial penalty (even though the arbitrator removes it after a few seconds). To lesson the effect of the initial "Penalty" slowing your download too much you can reduce the size of the Parameter "PENALTY_UNIT", also try setting the TRUNK_SIZE to something besides 0

Also remember that the arbitrator counts all bytes that it sees when setting a limit, an FTP download of a 1 meg file actually moves closer to 1.1 meg across the arbitrator.

Problem: I just loaded the GPL version and the bridge is working but apparently the arbitrator is not doing anything, I do not see any penalties.

Solution: You have incorrectly selected options when building your kernel and adding in the arbitrator. This is easy to do, and not obvious when it happens, you will need to follow the howto exactly and not skip any kernel configuration steps. Also try setting the TRUNK_SIZE to something besides 0

Problem: I loaded and built a GPL version with the bridge but when I add the Arbitrator patches and changes I get compile errors.

Solution: You have incorrectly selected options when building your kernel. This is easy to do, and not obvious when it happens, you will need to follow the howto exactly and not skip any kernel configuration steps and also do them in the correct order. Try compiling a stock kernel and getting it running first. If that goes well then add in the arbitrator code and patches as the how to suggests.

Problem: You are using the GPL version and you are trying to use firewalling features but they don't seem to work.

Solution: You probably have missed some configuration options when rebuilding the kernel. Go back and recheck the kernel configuration. Iptables works fine with the arbitrator when properly configured into the kernel.