In reply to a post by Cato2:

Unless the ISP documents explicitly how they are doing the shaping, and the DPI vendor does the same in freely accessible docs, it's very hard to know what's going on. QoS is complex enough without having to guess at the configuration.

Out of my depth with the technical side here, but if I understand what you are trying to do is evade the traffic shaping.

The people doing the traffic shaping are surely unlikely to publish the detailed info to help users do that?

This is not about evading shaping. I simply don't want to use port 22 for SSH as it's so commonly attacked. What I want to use is another port number that's suitable for interactive traffic.

With Plusnet, they also give port 222 the same good QoS as 22, because some firewalls use 222 for SSH. So in this case I'm just using another aspect of their existing QoS setup.

I only used port 119 originally because I thought my Netgear router didn't let me use arbitrary ports.

Apologies .

Nowadays I'm not sure you'd need the static IP so much, because things like LogMeIn (.com) will 'call home' and record the IP (even if you then use SSH to access), or Dynamic DNS (dyndns.com) which is supported by the DG834G AFAIK.

If the router isn't working, (to set the IP using DynDNS) you're not going to get very far anyway...

It might open your options considerably not to 'require' fixed IP.

Good point about the router supporting dynamic DNS, but in the past I've had problems with dynamic DNS solutions not updating quickly enough, or in some cases at all. The extra cost of a static IP is worth it if it avoids a 4 hour visit, including driving time.

I might look at this for my own setup though, as I can monitor it more closely while trying it out.

Just for completeness - I am going with O2 because:

- LLU seems better than going for ADSL Max now, and a WBC upgrade in next 6-12 months - only one upgrade to sort out
- they provide a static IP (but I can drop it if DynDNS works well enough)
- the mobile phone discount
- unlimited usage
- Quidco savings and 2 months free (till 6th Aug)

This relative's usage will be very low (she's on a 200 MB transfer at moment and almost never goes over it - that's MB not GB) but not having to worry about usage, particularly for remote backups, will be a plus.

In reply to a post by Cato2:

It should be fine .

Let us know how things go.