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Best dual band router for tomato firmware?

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element72

Occasional Visitor
I'm looking into installing tomato for its bw limit feature. I need to buy a new dual band router and dual band wireless adapter (I know wired is better). Any suggestions for this setup? I am looking to create a 5GHz signal exclusive for gaming. I tried tomato on two different routers, but it lags my game when someone who is limited creates an abnormal download spike. I wish I knew if that is a firmware limitation or hardware. Anyways, from a bit of searching it seems a lot of people recommend the ASUS RT-N66R. All thoughts and suggestions are welcome. :)
 
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for gaming on wireless it gets subjected to interference which can cause latency spikes.
Try a router with RMerlin's firmware first as it can be configured more. If QoS still doesnt work than your only choice is to go for a mikrotik router since it has the most options for QoS and can control burst throughput as well and choose different QoS algorithms and even mix them together.

With tomato, if it doesnt work on one router it wont work on the rest since QoS is done in software. There is a slight chance that your latency spike is caused by the CPU so you can also try a router that has hardware acceleration for wifi. If you want to verify this, try wire first and see if it changes. some ASUS routers have adaptive QoS for gaming which may be something you want to look at.
 
The almost any device with respectable QoS is capable of what you want. Layer-8 is usually where QoS problems originate, lol.

Currently the best QoS for your situation is FQ_CoDel. Codel is a "no knobs" (just enable it and it works) algorithm that dynamically adjusts buffer latency/delay so that full throughput can be achieved with the least latency. Some tomato & OpenWRT builds have codel, but if up-to-date QoS is your goal then the best choice is a PC loaded with IPFire or almost any other Linux-based firewall/router distribution. The evolution of CoDel is an ambitious project called "cake" and it is very near release.


What device are you running tomato on currently? Unless it is ancient, it should be capable of solving your problems.
 
The almost any device with respectable QoS is capable of what you want. Layer-8 is usually where QoS problems originate, lol.

Currently the best QoS for your situation is FQ_CoDel. Codel is a "no knobs" (just enable it and it works) algorithm that dynamically adjusts buffer latency/delay so that full throughput can be achieved with the least latency. Some tomato & OpenWRT builds have codel, but if up-to-date QoS is your goal then the best choice is a PC loaded with IPFire or almost any other Linux-based firewall/router distribution. The evolution of CoDel is an ambitious project called "cake" and it is very near release.


What device are you running tomato on currently? Unless it is ancient, it should be capable of solving your problems.
Asus RT-N10P. I tried it on the original linksys WRT54G too. But the latency issues occur during the sharp-instant download spike I observe in the IP live graph

Edit: I have comcast connection, so I speculate it might have something to do with the bursts like you both mentioned. I guess I need something more robust than just tomato's bw limit feature.

Edit: I tried enabling BW limiter with QoS and it seemed a lot more effective, but I haven't tested it that much.
 
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For downloads, you need to give the bulk traffic an artificial limit of 60-98% of your actual measured throughput because of the RTT delay that every rate negotiation must encounter. If you are downloading via bittorrent, you need even more headroom because 30 clients could start sending to you at the same time, causing your ISP's buffers to grow.


You should prioritize the ACK packets you transmit, if you have not.
 
For downloads, you need to give the bulk traffic an artificial limit of 60-98% of your actual measured throughput because of the RTT delay that every rate negotiation must encounter. If you are downloading via bittorrent, you need even more headroom because 30 clients could start sending to you at the same time, causing your ISP's buffers to grow.


You should prioritize the ACK packets you transmit, if you have not.
I'm not interested in downloading myself. My only priority is to eliminate the ping spikes I experience while gaming. I was trying to mention that the ping spikes occur when I observe someone on the router with a very short burst of download bandwidth. There should be enough bandwidth for me, but it still creates a ping spike in my online games. That comcast burst of download bandwidth works well when buffering the first few seconds of a youtube video, for example.

Should I still follow through with your instructions?

Edit: Sometimes the burst of download bandwidth I observe from other clients on my router go a little past the DL ceiling. That's normal right?
 
I'm not interested in downloading myself. My only priority is to eliminate the ping spikes I experience while gaming. I was trying to mention that the ping spikes occur when I observe someone on the router with a very short burst of download bandwidth. There should be enough bandwidth for me, but it still creates a ping spike in my online games. That comcast burst of download bandwidth works well when buffering the first few seconds of a youtube video, for example.

Should I still follow through with your instructions?

Edit: Sometimes the burst of download bandwidth I observe from other clients on my router go a little past the DL ceiling. That's normal right?

As soon as the download ceiling is hit (or buffer/queue limit, depending), your TCP congestion control will send a notice of congestion to the sender, then after the data he already sent arrives, he will begin to slow the bitrate.
Edit: Incoming traffic should not be buffered, if possible. Why delay data in a buffer when it has already arrived?

If the download bitrate peak is anywhere near your ISP maximum, you need to drop the bitrate.

Actually, the comcast burst should only be a benefit, afaict. It is better to be transmitting data rather than delaying it in a buffer.
 
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As soon as the download ceiling is hit (or buffer/queue limit, depending), your TCP congestion control will send a notice of congestion to the sender, then after the data he already sent arrives, he will begin to slow the bitrate.
Edit: Incoming traffic should not be buffered, if possible. Why delay data in a buffer when it has already arrived?

If the download bitrate peak is anywhere near your ISP maximum, you need to drop the bitrate.

Actually, the comcast burst should only be a benefit, afaict. It is better to be transmitting data rather than delaying it in a buffer.

The DL peak I observe is not near the ISP maximum. From a little more testing it appears that with BW limit and QoS enabled (with ACK packets checked) it does a slightly better job. My ping no longer jumps above 100. The latency issues is still there when a client creates a very short download spike on the live IP graph. The difference now is, while in-game, my ping only jumps up by about 20, but creates the same problematic stutter. There is always enough reserved bandwidth for me, but I'm confused as to why I still get a ping spike. Can you enlighten me on the issue I'm experiencing here? I'm no where near as informed as you guys and I greatly appreciate the help so far. :)

Edit: I set the max to be 6800kb/s, but the ISP max is 6000kb/s. The DL peak I saw was almost 4000kb/s. There would be 2000kb/s for me and that is more than enough for gaming.
 
The DL peak I observe is not near the ISP maximum. From a little more testing it appears that with BW limit and QoS enabled (with ACK packets checked) it does a slightly better job. My ping no longer jumps above 100. The latency issues is still there when a client creates a very short download spike on the live IP graph. The difference now is, while in-game, my ping only jumps up by about 20, but creates the same problematic stutter. There is always enough reserved bandwidth for me, but I'm confused as to why I still get a ping spike. Can you enlighten me on the issue I'm experiencing here? I'm no where near as informed as you guys and I greatly appreciate the help so far. :)

Edit: I set the max to be 6800kb/s, but the ISP max is 6000kb/s. The DL peak I saw was almost 4000kb/s. There would be 2000kb/s for me and that is more than enough for gaming.

QoS is does not work if you set the bitrates higher than the bitrates you average.


Also, do not worry about bandwidth available for gaming. We are trying to achieve good, consistent latency, which means avoid as much buffering as possible by artificially constraining your connection's throughput well below the maximum.


The best QoS tutorial is http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/qos-tutorial.68795/ if you want to get a better grasp of the many different aspects.
 

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