QOS Best Set-Up Practices At 1Gbps+ Speeds

[John DeLuca]

Hi there, I currently have an ISP plan that gives me an advertised 1200Mb/s DL and 40Mb/s UL. Speeds direct to the modem are at or above those speeds.

I know when using QOS you want to be 80-90% of your average speeds, but how does one do that at speeds above 1Gb/s, should you go by the speeds you get from computer to router (both 1Gb ports) or do you go by the max speed you get with a 2.5Gb nic tested directly to the modem. I know the router (GT-AX11000) should be getting the full 1200Mb/s speeds as both the modem and router are 2.5Gb ports.

If the rest of the ports are limited to 1Gb/s max, then should the dl limit be 1000Mb/s as the average should always be more than 20% most of the time? I know also the router probably can't route QOS traffic above 600Mb/s anyway and I can see this becoming an issue for consumer router hardware in the near future. The only reason why I use QOS is for buffer bloat reasons. I'm using FlexQoS ATM, if my routing hardware was beefer I would consider Cake. Im not sure there is any consumer router that can route cake or honestly any QOS at 1Gbps rates.

What do you all think is the proper way to set up QOS limits as ISP pushes past the 1000Mbps barrier?

 

[Tech9]

No QoS is perhaps the best setting for you. You don’t have bufferbloat below line saturation speeds. We have discussed this already in previous threads.

 

[Tech Junky]

If you're not doing voice/video it's a moot issue and nothing to worry about. By default most setups auto mark/classify those and move them to the top of the list for priority. The other data isn't as sensitive. I suppose if you're GAMING it might be but, otherwise not something to invest time and energy into at 1200/40. If you need more upload speed for voice/video then ditch cable and switch to something with more upload speed. TMHI / VZW offer higher UL and cost considerably less. On average I get 70UL on TMHI and when I take the gateway with me it hits 100UL in some spots. I wouldn't count on VZW to do the same but, it's an option if you get either for $25/mo with an existing line bundled into it.

 

[heysoundude]

I would suggest (based on the other threads on this topic that @Tech9 mentioned), no QoS is needed on the DL side...but it *may* be useful on the UL side.
It can't hurt to go read the cake manpage -
paging @Morris to chime in - he seems to be very well versed in QoS, especially as it pertains to such un-symmetical connections

 

[Morris]

Hi John,

You have two challenges:
- As you point out is CPU running out
- A very slow uplink on that asymmetric link

Some say that Flex QOS will not be CPU limited. I'm skeptical yet you can try and set it up and then do a speed test and see what you get. As your slowest download link is the 1-Gb ethernet on your router, the want interface needs to be protected from saturation. I'd start at 900-Mb on the WAN side. The 40-Mb link can saturate very easily and is so slow compared to the uplink you need to limit it and hope that your router can respond fast enough. Try 90% or 36-GB. The issue is that if the uplink can't keep up with acknowledgments due to priority traffic such as other acknowledgments, then packets will be lost and there is nothing that can be done about this. If your wan link only has a few flows, you should be OK.

Good Luck,

Morris

 

[Tech9]

As your slowest download link is the 1-Gb ethernet on your router

If the ISP provides consistently >Gigabit to the modem, the Gigabit WAN router port is a bandwidth limiter QoS by itself. There is no bufferbloat when LAN (on the modem side) is slower than WAN. @John DeLuca trusts too much online testing sites and believes he has constant bufferbloat. He doesn't.

 

[Morris]

If the ISP provides consistently >Gigabit to the modem, the Gigabit WAN router port is a bandwidth limiter QoS by itself.

Yes the slow link will limit the speed the modem can send traffic and that port can wind up queuing and dropping packets. This is a clastic cause of buffer bloat. If you saw his other post, limiting the traffic helped.

 

[Tech9]

This is a clastic cause of buffer bloat.

I disagree. Networks are not like pouring water from one bucket to another and hope for the best. Hardware limiter is as effective as software limiter. You guys will figure it out though. Someone will waste quite some time in the process. I have a feeling this someone will be the thread starter.

 

[Morris]

I agree to disagree. Either way, the slow link must be protected

 

[John DeLuca]

What would be the best tests for this? I mostly stream video and game. We stream more then we play games online though.

The only issue we have now (with flexQoS) is occasional quality drops on Disney plus and HBO. I’m assuming that’s because of some type of QOS rule.

I hate my ISP speed tiers, they recently did some infrastructure upgrades though so I should be getting up to 200Mbps upload soon I think by 2000Mbps download. They are the only choice I have unfortunately.

Let me know what and how I should test it seems like there is some disagreement.

 

[John DeLuca]

Oh yeah flexQoS is still being bogged down by the cpu for sure. I’ll post some testing in a minute.

 

[John DeLuca]

So this is flex QOS at 36UL 900DL the first two links the second two are no QOS. The line seems to be pretty good atm I did test this morning with dl 30+ and score of B. My First A+ ever was with QOS off just now lol.

QOS On
- https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=814cbcfd-3832-478a-a183-c2e0eb2a3585
-https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=1ecd2c99-05f5-44e8-ac10-3ff433d31849

QOS Off
- https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=b3947352-41ec-4a54-8cd5-313901fca2fa
- https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=ec91f344-b35b-4abc-a297-178011248f32

 

[Morris]

The problem with Flex QOS is that you must classify the flows. It is very hard to identify some flows as the providers intentionally obfuscate them to avoid recording. If all your video and VOIP is from specific IPs, you could use them yet frequently we stream from computers and there also the devices who's downloads need to get low priority. This is why I prefer CAKE as it just works. The 200-Mb you stated you get with CAKE may be enough for everything yet it may eat at you that you are giving up a lot of throughput for things like downloads. I have 100-Mb symmetrical and using CAKE have no problem for the three of us watching 4K video, doing VOIP and also recording video over then network. It depends on your applications.

 

[Morris]

So this is flex QOS at 36UL 900DL the first two links the second two are no QOS. The line seems to be pretty good atm I did test this morning with dl 30+ and score of B. My First A+ ever was with QOS off just now lol.

QOS On
- https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=814cbcfd-3832-478a-a183-c2e0eb2a3585
-https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=1ecd2c99-05f5-44e8-ac10-3ff433d31849

QOS Off
- https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=b3947352-41ec-4a54-8cd5-313901fca2fa
- https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=ec91f344-b35b-4abc-a297-178011248f32

These results with QOS off should be fine for video streaming, VOIP and all but the most avid gamer. Possibly the best solution is to leave it alone

 

[RMerlin]

I stopped using QoS when I moved from asym cable to symetric 1 Gbps FTTH. Almost no remote site ever succeeds in fully using the whole 1 Gbps, and bufferbloat tests have shown a score of A without any form of QoS being configured.

Bufferbloat and Internet Speed Test - Waveform

View the full results, and test your own bufferbloat

www.waveform.com

I'm going from 3ms to 13 ms. That 13 ms is on par with what cable used to give me without any load (8-10 ms on the first hop). Getting a mythical A+ score is nothing but flex. I dare any user to notice the real life difference between A and A+.

 

[garett_09]

I turned off QOS as it makes my bufferbloat score to B when QOS is turned on. Turning it off makes my score A+. Running the test via a wifi6 device. My internet speed is 500mbps up/down.

 

[drinkingbird]

I turned off QOS as it makes my bufferbloat score to B when QOS is turned on. Turning it off makes my score A+. Running the test via a wifi6 device. My internet speed is 500mbps up/down.

If you're getting A+ then something is limiting your connection. A+ is actually bad, believe it or not. So something in the path isn't able to saturate your connection.

In other words, a physical limitation is often the only way to get an A+.

If you saturate your connection, you're going to buffer packets and get latency. That's the whole purpose of buffers.

 

[garett_09]

If you're getting A+ then something is limiting your connection. A+ is actually bad, believe it or not. So something in the path isn't able to saturate your connection.

In other words, a physical limitation is often the only way to get an A+.

If you saturate your connection, you're going to buffer packets and get latency. That's the whole purpose of buffers.

I thought having an A+ score is the way to go? I just tried testing now in waveform and got a score of A. That is QOS turned off.

Bufferbloat and Internet Speed Test - Waveform

View the full results, and test your own bufferbloat

www.waveform.com

 

[drinkingbird]

I thought having an A+ score is the way to go? I just tried testing now in waveform and got a score of A. That is QOS turned off.

Bufferbloat and Internet Speed Test - Waveform

View the full results, and test your own bufferbloat

www.waveform.com

A+ means essentially buffers are not being hit at all, which means you aren't hitting your line's capacity. That may be a good thing in some cases, regardless chasing A+ or even A is not something to worry about. If you have people that are frequently doing large downloads at the same time that others are doing latency sensitive stuff like gaming, video calls, VOIP, etc, then you can look at QOS. Otherwise, just leave it off.

 

[garett_09]

A+ means essentially buffers are not being hit at all, which means you aren't hitting your line's capacity. That may be a good thing in some cases, regardless chasing A+ or even A is not something to worry about. If you have people that are frequently doing large downloads at the same time that others are doing latency sensitive stuff like gaming, video calls, VOIP, etc, then you can look at QOS. Otherwise, just leave it off.

Alright thank for the tips! This was very useful. In the case, I will not be turning on my QOS. As i noticed, it made my CPU usage go higher and the router heating up more.