Help with Buffer Bloat

[randomName]

My main computer is constantly and completely fine (A, A+, C) my gaming rig, which is the only reason I need Adaptive QoS, is having constant garbage reports C,C,C, D,D,D, etc. lately. I took out my Intel CT Adapter and used the onboard adapter, swapped out Cat wiring, rebooted the modem, did a Default initialization and reset the router, reset my computer bios with default speeds, changed from IE to Firefox, tested right after my main rig passes with A, A+, C reports & conversely tested my main rig right after my gaming rig with the same results, called my ISP and reset my cable modem, formatted the JFFS partition, and my gaming rig is constantly having buffer bloat problems mainly on the uploading. I'm a few steps short of wiping out my entire OS and reinstalling. I'm using an AC86U with 384.11_2 and FreshJR 8.8 Using Adaptive QoS, Manual settings, fq_codel, 85% of my speeds.

Help me fix this

 

[skeal]

My main computer is constantly and completely fine (A, A+, C) my gaming rig, which is the only reason I need Adaptive QoS, is having constant garbage reports C,C,C, D,D,D, etc. lately. I took out my Intel CT Adapter and used the onboard adapter, swapped out Cat wiring, rebooted the modem, did a Default initialization and reset the router, reset my computer bios with default speeds, changed from IE to Firefox, tested right after my main rig passes with A, A+, C reports & conversely tested my main rig right after my gaming rig with the same results, called my ISP and reset my cable modem, formatted the JFFS partition, and my gaming rig is constantly having buffer bloat problems mainly on the uploading. I'm a few steps short of wiping out my entire OS and reinstalling. I'm using an AC86U with 384.11_2 and FreshJR 8.8 Using Adaptive QoS, Manual settings, fq_codel, 85% of my speeds.

Help me fix this

I had to stop using adaptive qos I now use bandwidth limiter, with far better success, but you have to play with it to get it right. probably not something to use if you have a lot of competing devices. For me I have no issues but as I said it takes a while to set all up. You are chasing the "Holy Grail" of gaming. Its a trade off of quality versus buffer bloat. If buffer bloat is graded good more often than not it will be at the expense of quality (packet loss). You already know how to play with it, try bandwidth limiter for a while.

 

[randomName]

Do I have to adjust all clients or can I just adjust the download and upload for the game rig? I could care less about any of the other devices/clients.

 

[skeal]

Do I have to adjust all clients or can I just adjust the download and upload for the game rig? I could care less about any of the other devices/clients.

You have to do something with them or they have zero control and will eat all the bandwidth. I'm lucky as I use ranges for example: 192.168.1.5-9 lets say three IoT devices and then set really low bandwidth for them.

 

[skeal]

I have 23 devices and use only three lines on the QOS bandwidth limiter page

 

[Kingp1n]

I have 23 devices and use only three lines on the QOS bandwidth limiter page

Can you share how to setup bandwidth limiter say for 5 gaming consoles and only use 3 lines or less if available for gaming and make it high priority? I also have like 20 devices to include these gaming devices. I would like to give bandwidth limiter a try and compare it to adaptive qos. Thanks!

 

[skeal]

You can see here that four of my devices need all the bandwidth. My connection is 80/15 Fiber to the home. This works for the most part without issue for the bandwidth sensitive devices. This covers my gaming computer and my video streaming devices.

 

[randomName]

Soon as I set the limiter for my gaming rig it shot back to A, A+,C

Can I just use the same down/up limits to all my devices and get the same results?

EDIT: OH! And do we have to wait 5 min after making changes like before?

 

[skeal]

Soon as I set the limiter for my gaming rig it shot back to A, A+,C

Can I just use the same down/up limits to all my devices and get the same results?

I said earlier that it would take some tweaking, only you know your networks demands at the times you play. Play with the limits for a while. If the device is an IoT device they commonly do not require much bandwidth. The other thing is buffer bloat tests on a browser should be run using a user profile and different browsers. They give different results. You can depend on your in game results.

 

[Kingp1n]

You can see here that four of my devices need all the bandwidth. My connection is 80/15 Fiber to the home. This works for the most part without issue for the bandwidth sensitive devices. This covers my gaming computer and my video streaming devices.
View attachment 18295

I know you mentioned it will take some time fiddling with this setup, however can you recommend a simple start point to setup 3 Xbox? And the bandwidth to start up with?

 

[skeal]

I know you mentioned it will take some time fiddling with this setup, however can you recommend a simple start point to setup 3 Xbox? And the bandwidth to start up with?

Start with something like the picture I posted, you can see I have reserved all the bandwidth for 4 devices. The devices are never used at the same time. Very simple and is a great place to start. I took the max speed test values and took off what I thought the other less important devices might use on average. My ISP provisions my line with 80/15 so I took 15 off the top score and set the preferred devices to 65/10. Then I gave the rest to the other ranges to use. Its a good place to start. These adjustments limit your bandwidth. You WILL see this in a speed test. Example: My Ubuntu rig speed tests out at 10/5 as shown. If that bothers you this is not your solution.

 

[skeal]

Oh and you will have to reboot to get bandwidth limiter working as it requires all hardware acceleration to be disabled, which requires a reboot to take effect.

 

[randomName]

Does it require the 5 min wait period between adjustments?

 

[skeal]

Does it require the 5 min wait period between adjustments?

No, the script by @FreshJR needs five minutes. (To make sure to avoid race conditions). These settings (in bandwidth limiter) take effect instantly. You only need to reboot the one time, after enabling the Bandwidth Limiter service.

 

[randomName]

Thank GOD!

Thanks for your help so far!

Cheers

 

[skeal]

The other cool thing is you can leave the settings you have tried in the setup but change the green check mark (to the left of the rule) to an "x" and hit apply to temporarily exclude that rule. So in short you can enable and disable specific controls as needed (without having to remember the IPs and stuff).

 

[randomName]

Under Bandwidth Monitor, does the Priority function work in a different way than when using Adaptive QoS?

 

[skeal]

Under Bandwidth Monitor, does the Priority function work in a different way than when using Adaptive QoS?

I'm unsure how they interact.

 

[Vexira]

Under Bandwidth Monitor, does the Priority function work in a different way than when using Adaptive QoS?

Bandwidth limiter just assigns a specified amount of bandwidth, adaptive QoS does it based on traffic priority, I use adaptive QoS based upon how how fresh jr suggested on the first post he has up plus I'm using the overhead value which is 19 for my connection with my bandwidth set to 95% which is in accordance to exactly what ddwrt suggest to set it to for FQ-Codel.

Also are you using cable DSL or fiber?

 

[randomName]

Bandwidth limiter just assigns a specified amount of bandwidth, adaptive QoS does it based on traffic priority, I use adaptive QoS based upon how how fresh jr suggested on the first post he has up plus I'm using the overhead value which is 19 for my connection with my bandwidth set to 95% which is in accordance to exactly what ddwrt suggest to set it to for FQ-Codel.

Also are you using cable DSL or fiber?

I'm using Cable. My download speed is very consistent on either wired machine, upload is always erratic. Service is 30/3. I see 35-36 on download but upload is never static.

EDIT: Changed my limits from 30/2 to 34/2.8 the latter is close to 95% of 36/3

EDIT2: So basically for a small tolerance difference, using the Priority option in Bandwidth Monitor in the Adaptive QoS page is basically the same thing but by Client/Device instead of types of traffic.