So I watch my netflix on-demand movies on my Xbox 360 now.  The problem is, that because of comcast’s powerboost, the netflix app thinks my connection is capable of something like 12 mbps of bandwidth.  Granted, it is capable of that — for about a minute.  Then it buffers.  And buffers again.  Irritating as shit when you’re trying to watch a damn movie.

So I decided I needed to cap my xbox 360’s bandwidth.  I did a little looking around, and having a linux router, decided I needed a combination of iptables and tc.  Traffic shaping with tc and packet flagging with iptables.

Here’s the tc end of what I had to set up…$XBOX is my xbox’s static IP on my home network:

# external network interface queueing discipline
tc qdisc add dev eth1 root handle 1: cbq bandwidth 100Mbit avpkt 1000 mpu 64

# 5mbit class descriptor
tc class add dev eth1 parent 1:0 classid 1:1 cbq rate 5Mbit prio 1 avpkt 1000 bounded

# filter to ip –mark 1
tc filter add dev eth1 parent 1:0 protocol ip handle 1 fw flowid 1:1

And of course, the iptables end of it:

# mark packets coming from internet -> xbox
iptables -t mangle -A FORWARD -i eth1 -d $XBOX -j MARK –set-mark 1

That’s it.  I just fired up the fullmetal alchemist movie via netflix instant service and it didn’t buffer once.  So, w00t.

Back on twitter.  I’m not putting the link on my blog, and I’ll leave it as an exercise to you to find me on there if you’re so inclined.

The move is done and all links are updated.  Checklist Tree is now at http://checklisttree.sourceforge.net!

SourceForge approved Checklist Tree for hosting!  So a few changes are going to happen:

1. The page will move to sourcefoge.net servers as soon as I get a chance.
2. The source code will be in sourceforge’s subversion repository.
3. The releases will move to sourceforge.
4. The links on the software section will point to the project page on sourceforge.
5. The license will switch from public domain to GPL.  I see needing to use some GPL code in the future, so I might as well.

Hopefully the move will be smooth…hopefully

Took these pics a couple weeks ago at the Church’s Chicken at Oracle and Magee on the NW side.  Click thumbnails for larger versions.

First up, here’s a closeup of the ants…

And a shot illustrating where this gruesome scene takes place…

I can only hope a health inspector sees this.

So a bunch of us went out into the desert to shoot things…among which were two pumpkins.  Witness the carnage, and enjoy the music.

I don’t get this…

On the way to work, I saw a “yes for marriage” sign that someone had taped a “thank you” sign on top of.  What’s the point of that?  While the proposition passed in Arizona, had it been up to Pima County (the San Franpsycho of Arizona) the measure would never have passed.

Go put the thank you signs up in Maricopa county.  Give thanks where it’s due, not here.