# ALTQ removed by OpenBSD what about FreeBSD ?



## bryn1u (Oct 21, 2017)

Hey guys,

I have been looking for some information about ALTQ and have found some info about it:


```
ALTQ has served us well for years and was extremely important not just for
us, but for the entire bandwidth management arena. Back when we got altq,
the subject was not yet well researched and understood, which is why altq
is the framework with pluggable schedulers it is. Kenjiro Cho (kjc@) did an
amazing job there.

Now, more than 10 years later, we do have a good understanding and can use
a simpler framework with just one priority queueing and one bandwidth
shaping mechanism each - the new queueing subsystem. Last not least because
it is incredibly painful to maintain both in parallel, it is time for altq
to depart. Farewell, thanks for many years of good service. Everybody
using any form of "not just fifo" queueing owes Kenjiro a lot. At least
buy him a beer when you meet him.

And, allow me this personal note, thanks Kenjiro, working with you on the
topic has always been a great pleasure and I learned a lot from you. Thanks!
```

If it's true so how it will be looks from FreeBSD side ?


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## Oko (Oct 22, 2017)

bryn1u said:


> Hey guys,
> 
> If it's true so how it will be looks from FreeBSD side ?


What do you mean if it is true? ALTQ has being removed from OpenBSD six years ago during the development of the 5.0 release (current release is 6.2, note that OpenBSD is released every 6 months). ALTQ is one of those ultra rare occasions when the code which originated in FreeBSD was imported into OpenBSD (opposite direction seems to be far more frequent but it is irrelevant for this discussion). Even though 
ALTQ was a FreeBSD brain child it has never being enabled in generic kernel of FreeBSD. On the another hand it worked very well in OpenBSD starting with the release 3.3 until the release 5.0. It was enabled in generic but eventually over grown and replaced with native queuing system not without childbirth pains.

As of FreeBSD I think that people who can answer your question are probably not lurking here. Those few kernel developers who have know how to remove and replace ALTQ are under the pressure from various primarily California based economic interests and will do what their employers are asking them to do. Open source contrary to popular opinion is not driven by some higher altruistic interests but commonly by very simple economic rules.

The "community" of people who can't code and have no economic means to pay for the development of features like ALTQ can just continue to passively watch for the crumbs which will come from the table of those up in the food chain. You can start by checking how much and how well ALTQ is integrated with various FreeBSD firewalls, original IPF heavily used by Juniper networks one of main FreeBSD consumers, native IPFW, and obsolete semi-fork of OpenBSD PF which has not being updated more than half decade. If I have to guess as long as any of main FreeBSD users even those who contribute 0 lines of code back to community like Netflix want ALTQ to be in the kernel (even if it is not enabled by default) ALTQ will be there.


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## ondra_knezour (Oct 22, 2017)

(zero lines of code)


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## SirDice (Oct 23, 2017)

Oko said:


> If I have to guess as long as any of main FreeBSD users even those who contribute 0 lines of code back to community like Netflix


Maybe you should read up on it. Netflix contributes quite a lot actually.



> The OpenConnect appliance that Netflix uses to stream movies to its customers is based on FreeBSD. *Netflix has made extensive contributions to the codebase and works to maintain a zero delta from mainline FreeBSD.* Netflix OpenConnect appliances are responsible for delivering more than 32% of all Internet traffic in North America.


https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/nutshell.html#introduction-nutshell-users


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