Traffic shaping with tc

Sometimes it's necessary to limit traffic bandwidth from and to the VPS. You can do it using ordinary tc tool.

Packet routes

First of all, a few words about how packets travel from and to a VE. Suppose we have Hardware Node (HN) with a VE on it, and this VE talks to some Remote Host (RH). HN has one "real" network interface eth0 and, thanks to OpenVZ, there is also "virtual" network interface venet0. Inside VPS we have interface venet0:0.

    venet0:0               venet0    eth0
VE >------------->-------------> HN >--------->--------> RH

    venet0:0               venet0    eth0
VE <-------------<-------------< HN <---------<--------< RH

Limiting outgoing bandwidth

We can limit VE outgoing bandwidth by setting the tc filter on eth0.

DEV=eth0
tc qdisc del dev $DEV root
tc qdisc add dev $DEV root handle 1: cbq avpkt 1000 bandwidth 100mbit
tc class add dev $DEV parent 1: classid 1:1 cbq rate 256kbit allot 1500 prio 5 bounded isolated
tc filter add dev $DEV parent 1: protocol ip prio 16 u32 match ip src X.X.X.X flowid 1:1
tc qdisc add dev $DEV parent 1:1 sfq perturb 10

X.X.X.X is an IP address of VE.

Limiting incoming bandwidth

I can be done by setting the tc filter on venet0:

DEV=venet0
tc qdisc del dev $DEV root
tc qdisc add dev $DEV root handle 1: cbq avpkt 1000 bandwidth 100mbit
tc class add dev $DEV parent 1: classid 1:1 cbq rate 256kbit allot 1500 prio 5 bounded isolated
tc filter add dev $DEV parent 1: protocol ip prio 16 u32 match ip dst X.X.X.X flowid 1:1
tc qdisc add dev $DEV parent 1:1 sfq perturb 10

X.X.X.X is an IP address of VE.

Limiting VE to HN talks

As you can see, two filters above don't limit VE to HN talks. I mean, that VE can emmit as much traffic as it wish. To make such limitation from HN, it's necessary to use tc policer on venet0:

DEV=venet0
tc filter add dev $DEV parent 1: protocol ip prio 20 u32 match u32 1 0x0000 police rate 2kbit buffer 10k drop flowid :1