[colug-432] consumer grade router vlan 802.1p handling?

[Richard Hornsby]

Looking for some technical insight.  Several of us on our ISP (google fiber) forums are - having a discussion - because they supply a terrible router device and insist that we must use it, and cannot use our own Linksys/Netgear/Linux/etc device as with any other residential ISP.  They also haven't been too much help in resolving the issues we're having.  In short, the router provided has a mess of interface bugs and a bunch of broken/missing functionality.  (Yes -- fast speeds, and nonsense like half-baked port forwarding management if the forwarding works at all.)  All we're really asking them for is a way to put their router into a bridge mode so that it acts more like a typical cable or DSL modem.

Today, someone that I have to assume by his choice of pronouns is from Google, replied to the thread with this:

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Here's the gory details if you really want to use your own router:
1. Traffic in/out of the fiberjack is vlan tagged with vlan2.
2. DHCP traffic should have 802.1p bit = 2
3. IGMP traffic should have 802.1p bit = 6
4. All other internet traffic 802.1p bit = 3

You can send data without the 802.1p bits but your performance will get throttled to something like 10Mbit.

NOTE:  This data is subject to change.  We are planning on changing the data in/out of the fiberjack to be untagged, which will then make it really easy for you to connect your own router.
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I'm not even sure what this all means.  Assuming that "planning on changing" may result in something a long time from now, are there consumer grade devices capable of doing what he describes?  Are we looking at needing a full Cisco IOS device and CCNA background?  Can Linux with a couple of ethernet cards handle this?  I see a bunch of stuff in a Google serach about 802.1q, less about .1p.  Sorry, I know Linux pretty well (I think I do at least), but I'm dumb when it comes to this stuff.  I've set up and run my own Linux NAT/router a long time ago, but that's when it was a simple cable modem with no vlan or QoS type stuff.

thanks!