QoS or not once and for all.

[cdysthe]

Hi,

I have a R7000 fed by a CM600 modem with an EX7000 on the second floor of my house. All Netgear. My connection is 200 Mbps down an 20 Mbps up. I have a Roku TV and a Grace Audio system (streaming Pandora mostly) going at all times. In addition 4 laptops and 2 desktops connected. On top of that 4 - 6 phones. There's not much gaming going on, but often two Netflix instances going at the same time in addition to music streaming. A NAS is connected too the network as well from which we steam through the Roku. We very often use Skype or Viber for overseas long lasting calls as well.

I have read up on QoS as much as I can but can't agree with myself if what I read indicates I should enable down and/or up QoS or not. So my question is if someone would dare give me clear arguments for whether I should enable it or not? I have also read that QoS will disable some hardware feature on the router. Some say it does, others it doesn't. I will fully accept an answer saying trial and error is the only way, but I am hoping for something more conclusive [emoji3]


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[netwrks]

Hi,

I have a R7000 fed by a CM600 modem with an EX7000 on the second floor of my house. All Netgear. My connection is 200 Mbps down an 20 Mbps up. I have a Roku TV and a Grace Audio system (streaming Pandora mostly) going at all times. In addition 4 laptops and 2 desktops connected. On top of that 4 - 6 phones. There's not much gaming going on, but often two Netflix instances going at the same time in addition to music streaming. A NAS is connected too the network as well from which we steam through the Roku. We very often use Skype or Viber for overseas long lasting calls as well.

I have read up on QoS as much as I can but can't agree with myself if what I read indicates I should enable down and/or up QoS or not. So my question is if someone would dare give me clear arguments for whether I should enable it or not? I have also read that QoS will disable some hardware feature on the router. Some say it does, others it doesn't. I will fully accept an answer saying trial and error is the only way, but I am hoping for something more conclusive [emoji3]


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You never indicated whether you were having performance issues, or not, with your current configuration? Enabling QoS disables Cut Through Forwarding (CTF), which redirects all packets to the CPU(s) causing performance issues. You are at around the right Internet speed, where there would be an impact to performance. You can always give it a whirl, but if everything is working fine, then no need to enable QoS. I never use it, on an of my devices - just a personal thing.

If you are interested in trying different firmware for the R7000 check this link - more stable than stock firmware and quicker. Easy to upgrade to, and easy to back out of.. Hope you are using the EX7000, in AP mode...

 

[cdysthe]

Hi,

I do not really have problems. Some slowdown for others when I torrent Linux images and transfer large amount of files from home to my offive, but otherwise not. And I have had the EX7000 set up as an extender since I got it and haven't had any problems. My clients connect as they should and the speeds are as advertised. I know you are going groan when I tell you I use Smart Connect and the same SSID throughout. I have been told "it can cause problems for certain devices" but I've not seen any problems in nearly a year with my current setup. The one issue I have been wondering about is QoS. Thank you for your advice! Btw, I did try Merlin's ASUS firmware on the R7000 since I knew it from my previous Asus router. But as of the last stable update from Netgear for the R7000 I do not have speed problems or other issues.

 

[AntonK]

You never indicated whether you were having performance issues, or not, with your current configuration? Enabling QoS disables Cut Through Forwarding (CTF), which redirects all packets to the CPU(s) causing performance issues. You are at around the right Internet speed, where there would be an impact to performance. You can always give it a whirl, but if everything is working fine, then no need to enable QoS. I never use it, on an of my devices - just a personal thing.

If you are interested in trying different firmware for the R7000 check this link - more stable than stock firmware and quicker. Easy to upgrade to, and easy to back out of.. Hope you are using the EX7000, in AP mode...

Interestingly, I was told by a Netgear Guy that CTF is not disabled by enabled QOS.

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/question-re-downstream-qos-and-r7000.35070/#post-284325

 

[cdysthe]

Interestingly, I was told by a Netgear Guy that CTF is not disabled by enabled QOS.

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/question-re-downstream-qos-and-r7000.35070/#post-284325

Yes, that is interesting and no way for me to know whether it is correct or not [emoji3]. Thank you for the information.


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[AntonK]

Yes, that is interesting and no way for me to know whether it if correct or not [emoji3]. Thank you for the information.


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Yes, and I have the same questions about QOS as you do (as you can see by the whole thread of which I liked to one post above). It remains a mystery to me too. Much contradictory information from knowledgeable people.

 

[cdysthe]

Yes, and I have the same questions about QOS as you do (as you can see by the whole thread of which I liked to one post above). It remains a mystery to me too. Much contradictory information from knowledgeable people.

So it's not only me. That's a good thing I guess. While we're at it, Ive also seen contradictory claims about the traffic meter in the R7000. Also rumoured to affect a hardware feature. Not that I need the metering, but I soon may when Comcast puts a bandwidth cap on their plans. Until then I'll live in ignorance both on how much I use and whether the meter will slow me down [emoji3]

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[netwrks]

Here's an SNB post that discussed how CTF works. I honestly don't know if Netgear actually uses the Broadcom CTF feature in their firmware, or some other proprietary version, if at all. I have also heard that enabling any of the features like traffic meter also impede performance.

I mentioned XVortex firmware, as you can actually see what is enabled / disabled in the firmware (ie: CTF, FA). When enabling certain features. I run some R7000's (in AP mode) with xvortex, not stock firmware.

The best way to know if a certain feature has any impact on your router performance / throughput is enable it, and observe..

 

[cdysthe]

There's so many factors on a busy network that can affect throughput that I think there only way to get reliable results is throwing everything else off and then run tests over a couple of hours. Not sure I could do that unless i get up at 3 and do it then, or is there a way to do it on a live busy network?

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[pete y testing]

My connection is 200 Mbps down an 20 Mbps

the question here is at any time would you actually max that 200Mbps bandwidth as thats the only time qos will do anything

you might saturate the 20Mbps upload speed with torrents but that just a case of setting up the torrent app so it doesnt eat all the upload bandwidth

your streams aint going to get anywhere close to maxing out that 200Mbps

qos also wont help when transferring things within your lan / wlan environment

pete