Restricting Spotify ports

Hi folks,

Im currently on Virgin 20Mb cable, which has the upload speed of 768k. The internet connection is shared by me and my flat mate, however when she uses Spotify my latency shoots through the roof. I recently purchased a Linksys WRT54G2 which seems to have good QOS settings, however I don't know what ports Spotify uses. If I can find out then I can give it the lowest possible setting, any help wouldn't go a miss. Thanks a lot.

Don't quote me, but a friend who uses it says it uses 4070 to login but then uses a range of ports from 14000-65000 for its P2P function.

If it only uses port 4070 out and uses whatever ports the answering computers wants on the way back then you could use Port Triggering (if the Linksys has Port Triggering) by setting the triggering port to 4070 and enter 14000-65000 in the range box. This is the way I have uTorrent setup on my PCs. I use a different trigger port on each PC so that they don't conflict and if I want to I can then use uTorrent on each PC at the same time. Port triggering works even if a PC's IP changes with DHCP giving it a new one as it works on the port triggered rather than the PC and remembers which PC triggered port 4070 in the first place. However, you can only use Port Triggering on one PC for any particular port at a time. Hence the reason I have uTorrent use a different triggering port on my each of my PCs.

However, if it only uses port 4070 for login and then uses whatever random set of ports out-wards in the 14000-65000 range that it wants for the P2P function then you are going to have to set up port forwarding for 4070 and the 14000 to 65000 range. In this case, DHCP will be a problem as port forwarding needs to know what PC to send the incoming data to. For, unlike Port Triggering, It usually only remembers the PC by its IP rather than the port it opened.

The other thing you might be able to do is to use QOS on her PC by locking it to her MAC address, which your router should be able to tell you, and giving her a low priority. I can do that on my Netgear's QOS feature but I don't know if your Linksys has the same option. Though if you can do this it should enforce QOS on all her use, though you might consider that an advantage

One other thing I have just thought about after thinking about using her MAC to control her QOs is, instead, to give your PC the highest OQS rating which will automatically lower the priority all of her traffic. When your not doing much she can use whatever bandwidth her applications wants, but when you start doing anything all your traffic will have priority over hers.

Hope the above is some help or at least gives you some ideas to play around with. At least until someone who knows your router's capabilities better turns up anyway.

Hey jc,

Many thanks for the in depth reply, there are options you mention in my router settings actually. My router QOS page looks like this:

http://www.pcwintech.com/showimage?file=files/screen...

The only thing is if I do what you said, will this be applied to her PC even though she is using Wireless? I am connected through CAT5.

Thank you.

Sorry, been a bit busy. Looking at the image you supplied, unfortunately, it appears that there is only limited control for what you can do directly to her Wireless QOS, in a negative sense anyway, except leave the WMM option disabled.

However, you should be able to get round this, at least to a certain extent, by giving yourself highest priority throughout. For instance, as well as leaving WMM disabled, I would enter your device with a device name and its MAC in the Device Priority section. and select high priority. Also, give the ethernet port your machine is connected to the highest priority and Flow Control enabled. These two steps alone give anything you are doing the highest priority over her.

Finally, if the latency problem is happening in particular when you are doing something like playing a game or similar, where latency really matters, you can Click the Optimise Gaming Application check box and enter the details of your latency sensitive application and its ports in one of the boxes and giving it high priority. This also makes sure that anything else you yourself might be doing while using a latency sensitive application will minimise any effects on the latency sensitive application.

So, leaving WMM disabled stops QOS ever acting in her favour on the off chance she uses a WMM compatible device.

Adding your Ethernet port at High Priority is just adding a belt to the braces, so to speak, and means that with also adding yourself under Device Priority all your traffic always has highest priority.

And finally, adding appropriate entries and giving them high priority in the Application Priority Section for any Latency Sensitive applications gives you an added protection against anything else you or her might be doing on the network. I.e. your traffic will have the highest priority whatever you are doing and the entries in the Application Priority ensures that they have even higher priority and hopefully the best latency.

The only time she should ever notice any difference, if then, is if she does something that demands bandwidth when you want it as well, when she would be slowed down enough for your applications to do what it needs.

You might have to play around a bit to get it just right, but between them, those various steps should improve your latency problem.

Thanks a lot I did what you said and applied the settings, fingers crossed it helps! One last thing is do you reckon I should set my manual upload speed in there or set it to auto?

See how it goes and if necessary you can always give yourself as much as you want. However, does this work as a limit to those using QOS, i.e. a limit on the maximum you can use, or does it guarantee that you will always have that amount. Check your manual to see which of the two applies.