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CakeQOS CakeQoS Gaming issue

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lilstone87

Very Senior Member
Well both me, and I know at least one other person on here, mention having issues while gaming, using CakeQoS. So I wanted to make this thread, as we have posted about this a couple times, in other threads. However I feel this should have its own thread, because something is for sure off, with how cake is handling gaming traffic. I'm not the person who can dig deep into this, as I don't know enough at this point, to do that.

What I can tell you, is I have tested playing COD CW on my PS5, and with cake enabled. There's a noticeable small hitch/stutter that randomly happens multiple times throughout a match. This morning I played a couple match, first game on, I noticed it happening a good amount in a single match. So after the match, I disabled cake, played a second match, and this issue was gone. So when cake is enabled, this issue happens. So I'm curious as to what's causing this to happen. I would like to see some others who are using cake on here, to maybe test themselves, and see what they're seeing. I'm pretty sure I paused my game, and went over to the tab that shows the server latency, and there wasn't any latency spiking, that would line up to this happening.

Anyways if anyone who reads this, and does some online gaming. If you're up for it, and have the time to test yourself, run cake, and see if you can notice this happening. It honestly just feels like a very brief hitch in the game, kind of like what you feel when there's some lag going on.
 
You might be right, the test I've done by looking into the game packets themselves with wireshark wee not 100% valid, because you can't exactly get a latency value from udp packets, there no ack. I mean the packets themselves have very consist time between them and game shows no ping spikes, but I can't be sure as pinging even with tcp while game is running shows ping spikes.

I even locked frame rate to 10fps, soo I only had 10 packets per second to the game, and even with that I can see the same spikes on pingplotter.

This is not normal, but again, I don't feel it or see any spikes in-game. And gaming experience is a lot better than any other qos while there's load on connection
 
@lilstone87 can you run meter.net/ping-test and shows us the results? Try with Cake on and off

Because that causes latency issues with cake , just like a game.

Another easy test is to install pingplotter and ping 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 while you have the game running. Can be on different systems.
 
Well both me, and I know at least one other person on here, mention having issues while gaming, using CakeQoS. So I wanted to make this thread, as we have posted about this a couple times, in other threads. However I feel this should have its own thread, because something is for sure off, with how cake is handling gaming traffic. I'm not the person who can dig deep into this, as I don't know enough at this point, to do that.

What I can tell you, is I have tested playing COD CW on my PS5, and with cake enabled. There's a noticeable small hitch/stutter that randomly happens multiple times throughout a match. This morning I played a couple match, first game on, I noticed it happening a good amount in a single match. So after the match, I disabled cake, played a second match, and this issue was gone. So when cake is enabled, this issue happens. So I'm curious as to what's causing this to happen. I would like to see some others who are using cake on here, to maybe test themselves, and see what they're seeing. I'm pretty sure I paused my game, and went over to the tab that shows the server latency, and there wasn't any latency spiking, that would line up to this happening.

Anyways if anyone who reads this, and does some online gaming. If you're up for it, and have the time to test yourself, run cake, and see if you can notice this happening. It honestly just feels like a very brief hitch in the game, kind of like what you feel when there's some lag going on.
Which version of cake are you running?
Are you using the built-in CAKE from the Beta fw?
 
Which version of cake are you running?
Are you using the built-in CAKE from the Beta fw?

Running Merlin's built in cake from Beta1, also have the latest CakeQoS-Merlin V2.0.0 Alpha installed. I have noticed this before installing the last part as well. But yeah running Merlin's built in cake.

@lilstone87 can you run meter.net/ping-test and shows us the results? Try with Cake on and off

Ran a couple of these test's picked the new york server, closest to me. Average ping over multiple test was 20-21ms, with a max of like 39ms, which happen one time. Average jitter was 1-2ms max. However on cable(docsis) internet you will have some smaller spikes, here, and there. Still the type of stuttering/hitching I'm seeing at times, is something you would expect from 100+ms type spikes, not a 10-20ms spike. Also tested, with, and without cake, on that test, and didn't see a whole lot of difference.

I will continue to game with, and without cake enabled. As I want to see if I can notice any of this without cake enabled. So far, I only notice this happening when cake is enabled.
 
Running Merlin's built in cake from Beta1, also have the latest CakeQoS-Merlin V2.0.0 Alpha installed. I have noticed this before installing the last part as well. But yeah running Merlin's built in cake.



Ran a couple of these test's picked the new york server, closest to me. Average ping over multiple test was 20-21ms, with a max of like 39ms, which happen one time. Average jitter was 1-2ms max. However on cable(docsis) internet you will have some smaller spikes, here, and there. Still the type of stuttering/hitching I'm seeing at times, is something you would expect from 100+ms type spikes, not a 10-20ms spike. Also tested, with, and without cake, on that test, and didn't see a whole lot of difference.

I will continue to game with, and without cake enabled. As I want to see if I can notice any of this without cake enabled. So far, I only notice this happening when cake is enabled.

Can you replicate that spike if you run multiple tests? That's the exact spike i get with cake, sometimes only once per run. Without cake less than 1ms jitter, not a single spike.

No QOS should cause ping spikes without any load in my opinion. Even if rare.

Also run ping plotter while you have a game running on the network, you can be in training range or whatever, game lobby is not enough to cause this, at least on Apex.
Make sure nothing else is using bandwidth, make it as consistent as possible.
 
The random once a minute, or so, 10-20ms spike, is likely due to cable(docsis) internet. The CMTS(CCAP) the modem connects to, handle traffic not the best in terms of keeping smaller spikes in jitter from happening.

Still this has happen forever, and not something new. Also a 10-20ms spike on a 30ms server, isn't causing anyone to feel a stutter/hitch. This is something you notice when latency is jumping up in the 100-200ms range. Honestly just feels like packets are either randomly being delayed, or even dropped at times with cake enabled.

Over the next few days, i plan to try to play around 8-10 matches, without any QoS, with Cake, and with Adaptive QoS. At this current time, recently I have only noticed this happening with cake enabled. But i will test without it, and with Adaptive QoS enabled. If i feel after my testing is complete, cake is the cause. I will have to ask the one's using cake, and know the way cake's QoS system works. To maybe look into a possible cause for this.
 
Run these commands to get some stats on your Cake while these problems are happening.
Bash:
tc -s qdisc show dev eth0 root; tc -s class show dev eth0
tc -s qdisc show dev ifb4eth0; tc -s class show dev ifb4eth0
The first line is for upload, the second for download.

The qdisc portion shows cumulative stats. The class portion shows instantaneous stats on your current flows and would show if Cake is deliberately dropping anything at that moment, but you have to catch it while the flow is still active, which can be hard for sparse flows and easy for bulk flows like downloads.
 
Run these commands to get some stats on your Cake while these problems are happening.
Bash:
tc -s qdisc show dev eth0 root; tc -s class show dev eth0
tc -s qdisc show dev ifb4eth0; tc -s class show dev ifb4eth0
The first line is for upload, the second for download.

The qdisc portion shows cumulative stats. The class portion shows instantaneous stats on your current flows and would show if Cake is deliberately dropping anything at that moment, but you have to catch it while the flow is still active, which can be hard for sparse flows and easy for bulk flows like downloads.

Edit: I don't think dropped packets are a problem, I reset cake again, and only ran meter.net/ping-test a few times. No dropped packets yet I see a lot of ping spikes that don't happen once with FlexQos or no QOS.

cakedown.jpg
cakeUP.jpg
 
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I don't think dropped packets are a problem

I was honestly just throwing out two likely causes to this. So it seems to me cake is in a way causing packets to be delayed randomly, which is maybe the reason you're seeing random spikes? Overall I know gaming packets should all be going over UDP, now it's about trying to figure out what cake is doing to this traffic.

My plan today, is to at least play 8-10 matches without any QoS enabled. After that I'm thinking trying Adaptive QoS next, and then testing with cake again. Likely this will happen over a couple days, as that's several hours of gaming, and I normally don't play for long periods.
 
I was honestly just throwing out two likely causes to this. So it seems to me cake is in a way causing packets to be delayed randomly, which is maybe the reason you're seeing random spikes? Overall I know gaming packets should all be going over UDP, now it's about trying to figure out what cake is doing to this traffic.

My plan today, is to at least play 8-10 matches without any QoS enabled. After that I'm thinking trying Adaptive QoS next, and then testing with cake again. Likely this will happen over a couple days, as that's several hours of gaming, and I normally don't play for long periods.

Leave ping plotter running while gaming. That will catch any network instability. Remeber game servers are not always great. For example on Apex they have garbage servers, client to server: up to 128hz and server to client only 20hz. But even the client to server drops to like 20hz at the start of matches and that causes pretty big latency swings. Apex latency stats update very often like 2 times per second and I don't see any spikes caused by cake at all.
Same goes for PUBG, very fast latency stats, but always stable low ping on this because it has much higher and stable tick rate.

Battlefield V on the other hand also gives me very stable ping, but latency stats don't update often, the game also sends like 20-30KB/s to the server, the highest in terms of upload bandwidth that I've seen. Haven't tested tick rate for this one, but it should be high at high frame rates (144fps stable).
 
Well what you mention.. is the reason I plan to play 8-10 matches, without, and with QoS in place. That's a bigger sample to test, and if I notice the same issue without, and with QoS. I will know it's something outside of QoS causing this. As I mentioned before, just recently I have been noticing it often, and CakeQoS has been enabled. But as I test this more, I will get a good understanding if it's cake causing it, or something server side related, or such.
 
@dave14305 , @RMerlin

I Finally found the problem with cake giving ping spikes in meter.net/ping-test and some other scenarios. It has to do with the limits, if I place 1000mb up/down limit I get no more spikes, not even 1! Limiting to 100mb down and 10mb up improves it a lot but doesn't fix it. Needs to be much higher limits.
With proper limits I get a lot of overlimits packets, and that seems to be the cause for these spikes. Once i increase limits to crazy values no more overlimits packets and no more ping spikes.
 
@dave14305 , @RMerlin

I Finally found the problem with cake giving ping spikes in meter.net/ping-test and some other scenarios. It has to do with the limits, if I place 1000mb up/down limit I get no more spikes, not even 1! Limiting to 100mb down and 10mb up improves it a lot but doesn't fix it. Needs to be much higher limits.
With proper limits I get a lot of overlimits packets, and that seems to be the cause for these spikes. Once i increase limits to crazy values no more overlimits packets and no more ping spikes.
So you get better results using cake unlimited bandwidth (i.e. ASUS "Automatic Bandwidth") mode? You don't have to enter phony bandwidth, just use Automatic mode in the ASUS QoS GUI.
 
So you get better results using cake unlimited bandwidth (i.e. ASUS "Automatic Bandwidth") mode? You don't have to enter phony bandwidth, just use Automatic mode in the ASUS QoS GUI.


Automatic has the same behaviour yes. It seems to be related to the overlimits stats, if i set auto bandwidth or crazy high limits I get 0 overlimits and no more spikes.
The problem with this is crazy bufferbloat, it is unusable for me. It's only to show it is indeed a cake issue.
Using FlexQos with normal limits I don't see these spikes.

I'm talking about the overlimits stats you get from running:
tc -s qdisc show dev eth0 root; tc -s class show dev eth0
tc -s qdisc show dev ifb4eth0; tc -s class show dev ifb4eth0
 
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This is related to upload as can limit download without issues. Only upload needs to be set to 1000mbps.
Can this be related to the modem/router (tg784v3) I have in bridge mode behind the Asus? Or it's simply a cake issue? Connection between ac86u and tg784v3 is full gigabit, and I don't think i can force it to 100mbps to test.
 
@dave14305 @askan7

Well here's my update from today, this is me playing on my PS5, playing COD CW. I decided to play without any QoS to start, probably played around 8, or so matches, no periods of things being funky. I ended up turning on cake, and played a couple games so far. I went with cake first, as it was already setup, just needed to turn QoS back on. The games I played so far, seem to play just fine. There's something I will share down below, and I think it might be the reason for the issue I have been seeing.

Being that I have had the PS5 since a week after its launch, I have seen some issues here, and there. One of them was a patch they pushed for COD CW for the PS5. It was having a bad hitch/jitter issue, which was happening a good bit. Enough.. the devs for COD suggested players play the PS4 version, on their PS5's, until they could fix it. They ended up fixing it, and things ran fine. However this morning, before I decided to play, I thought about this previous issue, and decided I would play the PS4 version today, on my PS5. So far things have actually run really well for me today, playing the PS4 version of COD CW. However as you would expect graphics are lower quality, and the PS5 version is able to run at 120hz, with a capable monitor, which I do have, and use. But honestly.. to me at least, 60hz to 120hz isn't a big difference imho.

At this point, I plan to test more over the next couple days, playing the PS4 version for now, and I will see how things go. If things continue to play well, I will without question place the blame on the PS5 version of COD CW having some issues, which will require their devs to hopefully solve, with an upcoming patch. I'm happy I created this thread, and I plan to keep updating it as needed. For now, I hold no judgement on CakeQoS, it might be fine, and I just happen to notice this current issue, after recently starting to use cake again.

As for the auto, or setting both bandwidth limits at 1000mbps, I will mess with that a bit, and see how things look. However I do expect my connection to show a random 10-15ms spike, here, and there. Due to how the CMTS(CCAP) handles traffic from the modem, sending it to the internet. This type of thing, has been common, for as long as I have been on cable internet. Which has been a long time. Still I'm very confident in saying, there's no way in hell a 10-15ms latency spike on a 30ms server, is causing the random hitches/stutters I have seen recently.
 
@lilstone87 Try to set upload limit to 1 mb/s, and run meter.net/ping-test. It could something with cake + low upload limits.

offtopic: Also you don't notice much between 60 and 120hz? are u sure game is running at 120fps? Because I can't play fast paced games at 60fps on PC, it's soo much stutter/not smooth, even with gsync + high mouse delay (floaty).
 
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This is related to upload as can limit download without issues. Only upload needs to be set to 1000mbps.
Can this be related to the modem/router (tg784v3) I have in bridge mode behind the Asus? Or it's simply a cake issue? Connection between ac86u and tg784v3 is full gigabit, and I don't think i can force it to 100mbps to test.
What is the speed of your network connection and what is the best test you have seen on that link? Also, what is typical tested speed?
Other than in the test you demonstrate in your video. What are your bandwidth settings for cake?
What else is running on your network besides the game?
 
offtopic: Also you don't notice much between 60 and 120hz? are u sure game is running at 120fps? Because I can't play fast paced games at 60fps on PC, it's soo much stutter/not smooth, even with gsync + high mouse delay (floaty).

Yeah it's for sure running at 120hz, both the in game menu, and the monitor itself has a setting to show what fps it's running at, shows 120. I'm not saying it doesn't run a bit smoother, but overall to me, it's not a super big deal.

Also I did your test with them settings, almost every test I averaged around 1.5-1.7ms of jitter. So changing the settings for me at least, didn't matter. But I'm on cable(docsis) I get 1000mbps down, 35mbps up. Maybe cake is a bit funny with your type of internet connection, when bandwidth settings are set to low. Doesn't seem to affect my connection though.
 

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