CakeQOS CakeQOS for Gaming?

Tech9 said:

I'm not familiar with what's available in Ireland. Enabling IPv6 though rarely makes any difference in speed and latency.

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I can’t wait for the day you start disclaiming your replies with “…in my experience.”
In the meantime, I’m going to keep encouraging people to take a closer look at it on their own if it’s available to them, so that perhaps they’ll be intrigued enough to look deeper into the details on their own, to form their own opinions/conclusions.

What you perhaps don't know is that IPv6 enabled on Asus routers breaks some of the functionality in firmware options. In particular the most popular QoS option - AdaptiveQoS. Tested on recent firmware versions and 3x different model routers. It also often breaks Asus DDNS. It also creates IPv6 leaks when using VPN. Keep encouraging people with your experience on an EoL router and 50/10 ISP connection. You can't even see some of the issues. I'll keep discourage them when IPv6 is not needed.

Remember I eat Mandalorians for breakfast?

Tech9 said:

In particular the most popular QoS option - AdaptiveQoS.

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Is that right? What was the test scenario?

dave14305 said:

Is that right? What was the test scenario?

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Unfortunately. Easy test scenario - manual up/down, AdaptiveQoS, IPv6 Native, speed test. The upload limit is not applied, goes full speed. Tested on last few RT-AX86U firmware versions, then I've got RT-AX88U and RT-AX58U to test. Same thing on all routers with respective Asuswrt version. I don't have Pro router to test with. This bug was there in 386 firmware and migrated to 388. IPv6 disabled - starts working as expected. I reported it in few RT-AX86U release threads. Some versions had AdaptiveQoS broken, others Traditional QoS and Bandwidth Limiter. I don't know what causes it. It was one of my items on the list to check.

SadBeatz said:

VDSL 40mbps download / 15mbps upload

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Change your WAN Packet Overhead to PPPoE VDSL or VDSL2 PPPoE depending on your connection type and you should be good to go with Cake.

Tech9 said:

What you perhaps don't know is that IPv6 enabled on Asus routers breaks some of the functionality in firmware options. In particular the most popular QoS option - AdaptiveQoS. Tested on recent firmware versions and 3x different model routers. It also often breaks Asus DDNS. It also creates IPv6 leaks when using VPN. Keep encouraging people with your experience on an EoL router and 50/10 ISP connection. You can't even see some of the issues. I'll keep discourage them when IPv6 is not needed.

Remember I eat Mandalorians for breakfast?

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(What about CakeQoS?)
Not everyone here or in the wild uses any or all of those.

(your colonoscopies must be interesting for your doctors)

Tech9 said:

Unfortunately. Easy test scenario - manual up/down, AdaptiveQoS, IPv6 Native, speed test. The upload limit is not applied, goes full speed. Tested on last few RT-AX86U firmware versions, then I've got RT-AX88U and RT-AX58U to test. Same thing on all routers with respective Asuswrt version. I don't have Pro router to test with. This bug was there in 386 firmware and migrated to 388. IPv6 disabled - starts working as expected. I reported it in few RT-AX86U release threads. Some versions had AdaptiveQoS broken, others Traditional QoS and Bandwidth Limiter. I don't know what causes it. It was one of my items on the list to check.

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IIRC, @dave14305 quarterbacked if not created Adaptive QoS on our routers, so I'll wager them are fighting words to him.
I'll also wager that if he can, he will fix it within 7 days.

heysoundude said:

IIRC, @dave14305 quarterbacked if not created Adaptive QoS on our routers

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No, that was Asus and Trend Micro, not me.

heysoundude said:

What about CakeQoS?

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The closest hardware I have available is RT-AX58U. I can test CakeQoS* for you with the latest available firmware in both IPv6 Native and Passthrough configurations. I can guarantee you I'll find something off with IPv6 enabled. I know it's frustrating, but Asus always fixes something and breaks something else. In recent past Passthrough mode was not recognized at all in WebUI, we had firewall bug potentially exposing IPv6 connected devices in Native, we had DDNS not working, almost always one of the QoS options is broken in Native, etc. I don't expect QoS to work properly in Passthrough when IPv6 network is in fact driven by the upstream router, but broken in Native is a firmware bug. This is not IPv4 vs IPv6 conversation. This is what happens with IPv6 enabled on a specific device. If you ask me - Asuswrt has to be rewritten from ground up and simplified. Right now it's approaching hard to control mix of accumulated over years code and I guess very few people actually know what's going on there.

* - you can test CakeQoS yourself on your router and firmware. With your IPv6 Native enabled set manual down/up to 20/2 and do a speed test. If you see something above - it's broken. Disable IPv6, reboot and test again. Most of the time it fixes it, if found broken. What I found - on different firmware versions different type of QoS has issues with IPv6 enabled. After you upgrade the firmware better do the test above to make sure your QoS option is still working as expected.

heysoundude said:

Not everyone here or in the wild uses any or all of those.

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The reason I said IPv6 may limit QoS choices. Traditional QoS and Bandwidth Limiter are usable up to the CPU packet processing capabilities. AdaptiveQoS is a popular choice when ISP speed is >300Mbps. CakeQoS has the same limitation as Traditional QoS and Bandwidth Limiter - incompatible with NAT acceleration.

dave14305 said:

No, that was Asus and Trend Micro, not me.

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Gah! I’m confuzzling this with FlexQoS. Apologies

heysoundude said:

I’m confuzzling this with FlexQoS.

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Even in that case, the heavy lifting and creativity was from @FreshJR back in the day. I only tweaked his original work after he disappeared. Thanks for the vote of confidence, but my role was minor in the grand scheme of things.

Tech9 said:

I'm not familiar with what's available in Ireland. Enabling IPv6 though rarely makes any difference in speed and latency.

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It doesn't hurt to try - IPv6 can have better peering upstream for more efficient routing - but most gaming is still on IPv4 as the network stack is easier to work with for multi-player gaming...

Tech9 said:

Perhaps no QoS can fix high latency to remote game server. Too many variables in the equation.

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QoS is designed to shed packet to keep the flows at an even keel...

UDP is less tolerant of packet loss, so QoS can impact games that are heavily dependent on UDP.

I suggest playing it by ear - QoS vs. Flow Acceleration - any fast-path solution as a requirement, cannot drop packets...

sfx2000 said:

QoS is designed to shed packet to keep the flows at an even keel...

UDP is less tolerant of packet loss, so QoS can impact games that are heavily dependent on UDP.

I suggest playing it by ear - QoS vs. Flow Acceleration - any fast-path solution as a requirement, cannot drop packets...

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I love using CakeQoS because it makes every device work without any buffering, the problem is when playing games there's packet delays (I think) for example playing CS at like 30ping it feels like I'm playing at 100

SadBeatz said:

I love using CakeQoS because it makes every device work without any buffering, the problem is when playing games there's packet delays (I think) for example playing CS at like 30ping it feels like I'm playing at 100

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This may be out of your hands as the issue may very well be from your ISP provider.

SadBeatz said:

I love using CakeQoS because it makes every device work without any buffering, the problem is when playing games there's packet delays (I think) for example playing CS at like 30ping it feels like I'm playing at 100

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CakeQoS is a lot of work for only working when you saturate your ISP connection. The other thing is I assume it works on UDP and you are not using it on TCP. Can it tell the difference in game UDP and video streaming UDP? Otherwise, if anybody is streaming video, they will have the same priority. You know you only have QoS on upload not download as you cannot control your ISP nor the internet. They are in charge of QoS on their side of all the upload coming to you. QoS is just a way to drop packets. Most of the time you want to drop TCP packets as they have packet sequencing and are easy to retransmit. UDP needs the whole thing retransmitted.
If you are really concerned then buy a faster internet package. It seems easier to me.

coxhaus said:

CakeQoS is a lot of work for only working when you saturate your ISP connection. The other thing is I assume it works on UDP and you are not using it on TCP. Can it tell the difference in game UDP and video streaming UDP? Otherwise, if anybody is streaming video, they will have the same priority. You know you only have QoS on upload not download as you cannot control your ISP nor the internet. They are in charge of QoS on their side of all the upload coming to you. QoS is just a way to drop packets. Most of the time you want to drop TCP packets as they have packet sequencing and are easy to retransmit. UDP needs the whole thing retransmitted.
If you are really concerned then buy a faster internet package. It seems easier to me.

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Can't, where I live this is the fastest internet I have

SadBeatz said:

Can't, where I live this is the fastest internet I have

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Back in the old DSL days 6meg was it and you constantly were hitting the limit so Cake would have been good. But you still are going to drop packets when you hit your limit.

Tech9 said:

IPv6 by itself won't give you any latency improvements. Depending on what routing you have upstream at ISP and up level all the way to the responding server - may make it even worse. You never know what part of the network still runs 6in4 in 2024, for example. Many ISPs still don't support IPv6 in 2024.

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They sure don't here in Canada. Most of them have terrible or no implementation.

Though apparently that has spared me great headaches. I keep IPv6 disabled, and have solely those glitchy routers that Tech9 mentions. I wasn't even aware that such a terrible bug exists, but it doesn't surprise me. I have IPv6 disabled everywhere that I have ASUS routers installed. Again, not ready for prime time here, sadly...

To cope with all the UDP protocols, the maximum incoming bandwidth needs to be appropriately low, and then unclassified UDP allowed to slip through, with some exceptions (uTP, etc.) - that keeps those gaming packets rolling in without being dropped. And then for outbound traffic, the more accurate you can make your rules, the better. Otherwise, very forgiving buckets are the answer... in FlexQOS I have a middle tier bucket that has quite a bit of speed available, while some higher priority buckets have less bandwidth, because I know they'll always go first. It works quite well. Keeps the connection snappy and jitter very low, even when downloads are hogging 85% of the connection.

It did take a few months to tune it well for everything.

BikeHelmet said:

They sure don't here in Canada. Most of them have terrible or no implementation.

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I have multiple Bell and Rogers residential and business lines in use and they have no issues with IPv6, but here in Canada we still don't have the issue IPv6 was designed to solve >20 years ago. Running dual stack for us is just unnecessary complication and IPv6 capable gear is still resolving own issues we don't really need to deal with.