You probably have less then 30ms ping for any server in EU while I must live with a best case of 86ms while a average of 120ms so don't complain. PREMIUM INTERNET SPEED IS 20MBPS FFS WITH 100GB PER MONTH.
it's annoying when the bufferbloat does not occur on your own router but the last accumulation point at your ISP when your neighbors might stream netflix/amazon 4K in the evening and you're trying to game
noise on the cable line, installer thinks its possibly a neighbor with a bad cable box so there's nothing they can do for me.. just comcastic. small town has a fiber ISP that sent out fliers, but only in new developments.. just buy a new house /s.
@@BrianG61UK not possible for me here where i live, only available technology is DSL and only one provider that offers more than 2mbit/s (location is Germany by the way)
You might want to caution users not to enable this feature unless they’re actually experiencing problems. Many of these algorithms work by adding an intentional delay to packets before sending them out to provide time for sorting. If you’re not experiencing latency issues, you’ll pay the toll of a small latency increase for no reason. QoS is famous for causing you to fail to get all the speed that you actually pay for. virtually always I get lower speed test results with these features enabled.
To expand on the example of a line at the grocery store, imagine that the person who rearranges the line has to get out from behind the counter to do that, and if there are only two people in line, making a big deal over the order like asking customers how quickly they need service could be slower than just processing people immediately.
yup, especially if you have a high speed fiber, normal consumer router cannot handle that kind of load, especially sqm aka cake, it's an intensive processor & memory process. Furthermore, nowadays most of the latency is isp induced, nothing can be done other than changing isp.
FINALLY LMD APPROACHES THIS. We need more people to know about bufferbloat because it really is a pain in the ass. The router from my isp has neither QoS or a fast enough processor.
Wouldn‘t this only affect your home network then? To my knowledge, most internet congestion still occurs outside of the local network. That’s why we have all these fancy routing protocols
Finally an explanation for what I've been dealing with. I couldn't figure out how I could get good speeds but bad buffering for things like videoconferencing. Ugh.
A suggestion... talking about prioritizing packets (essentially QoS) only affects your LAN (& WLAN)... You should mention the common problem with over-subscription at home ISP's - which you can't fix by enabling QoS in your home network. There is also the perspective with different type of Internet connections (for example, Cable Internet (Docsis) is a shared medium, which it self can lead to latency issues at peak hours).
Problem is, your router is not the only buffer. All the routers that are part of the Internet contain buffers in some sense. You can’t help it if your ISP router upstream is having the same problem.
If your router supports bandwidth shaping you can test your bandwidth during peak hours: and set your router to keep your connection speed *just below that*. Of course you may want to recheck periodically. Apparently Telus doubled out burstable speed in the past year (was 75Mbps, is now 150Mbps).
Yeah that seems to be a common problem for legacy DSL internet connections as well (which does still exist out in rural areas. Many still have no internet at all).
I had another solution to this on an older tp-link router (can't remember exact model, it was a popular cheap one), I limited the bandwidth to lower than what the isp gives for everything except the pc I used. And it worked!
@Z3U5 its the speed auto negotiation settings generally used when the ethernet link is poor quality he downgrade automatically the speed for stability but we can force it : If I have for example 500mbps real internet speed, I can force the speed auto negociation on ethernet nic for each device to use 100mbps full duplex (in windows properties or router settings for some models) So if someone in my home watch netflix he will download the video at 100mbps that suffisent for 4k (netflix recommend 15mbps for that resolution) but the 400mbps are free for other computers In conclusion we can have 5 computer/device with 100mbps dedicated speed that is enough for almost every domestic usage and this solution cost 0$
I just want to thank you guys for covering a topic that's been on my mind since the pandemic started. A lot of the fighting game peeps I know don't know about bufferbloat and how it affects them and it just becomes a "not fun" time whenever bufferbloat is actually the cause. I have an IQRouter V3 and it works very well with a cable provider I use on a high download / low upload connection. I installed OpenWRT on a very old netgear router as well but it cuts off wireless capabilities and the hardware could only handle so much at a time, it's still a good Router OS on its own.
If you have an old PC, you could add a second NIC to it and install something like pfSense or IPFire, then flash your old router back to stock firmware to get wifi back.
IQRouters are great! Only downside is if you have more than a 500MB connection, it can’t adequately work if you are maxing out that bandwidth across devices. Also, their support is second to none!
There's also a feature called airtime fairness (your router probably has it since its a 10year old technology), its really effective at solving this problem by ensuring that each device on a network gets the same bandwidth by allocating the same time to transmit and receive data packets.
I find airtime fairness to almost ALWAYS be counter productive and leave disabled. If I see it enabled, I disable it and if there were any WiFi issues, they tend to get noticeably better. I like to rely on more standardised IEEE certified solutions as they tend to cause less problems...unless you're dealing with Apple devices (specifically the roaming standards, I usually turn off because of so many Apple devices that tend not to work when these are enabled even if Apple says they support them).
@@technerd9655 I'd like to point out that MANY former implementations of ATF were very flawed because they did not do FQ or compensate for bufferbloat. ATF is now on by default in many openwrt based routers based on the fq_codel for wifi implementation, for the mt76, ath9k, ath10k, and ax210 chips. If you encounter a problem with that implementation, please contact the authors of "ending the anomaly", the paper that documents how it works.
I knew smh was wrong with my s2s vpn, switching qos mode to cake gave 2-3x boost in bandwidth. And test result went from C to B on the worse side. You are lifesavers!
Why have I never heard of this before? Finally an answer as to why somthing as simple as watching youtube used to result in garbage pings if somone else was gaming in the house, it seems to have gotten a lot better with faster internet tough. Unfortunantly my router dosn't support SQM or anything like that so anything that really utilises the connect like a large donwload would probably still cause issues with games.
Parts like “if you do say you so yourself” at 0:18 feel so golden because this channel is so polished it’s like some cool discovery when even a millisecond sounds not. I wonder if they script the unpolished parts just to make viewers like me feel like we caught something.
Of course they do. See Tom Scott's recent video on why many RUclipsrs clap at the start of their videos. If it was just for sync purposes it wouldn't make the final edit.
I've been told by a network person that the traffic shaping features in routers don't really work, since they require much more processing power than their chips can handle. It seems like queue management is a simpler feature though, just for gaming and communication packets, as opposed to prioritizing all the traffic of all the devices on the network.
If a consumer router offers such features, probably true. However, if you get something with just a little power it can more than handle it and it does help. My recommendations are to either build your own router or look into Mikrotik. There are Mikrotik routers for $200-$300 that are pretty darn powerful and compare to $2,000+ cisco devices.
Depends entirely on your Internet speed. The CPU on my wired Ubiquity router is apparently good for 200-300Mbps, which is higher than my 150Mbps connection speed. I plan to have most of the LAN traffic bypass my router by using the ISP-supplied router as an Access point/switch.
im a network engineer, the long and short is that it depends on if the other routers down the line will respect the tag you assign them... which i doubt they will. One thing to note is that traffic shaping and QoS only ocures if there is congestion. Buying a faster internet link to your service provider can provide you with a connection that has no need to buffer packets and therefore wont even begin to use a QoS system like this. Im not super well versed in the proprietary home network QoS solutions but this feature could only possibly be useful if you have a very congested network or other devices from your ISP were gonna respect the tags giving you overall lower latency across the entire trip.
For me Mikrotik Routers works like charm especially with Queue Tree. Tricky though. Also OpenWRT + Adguard in Raspberry Pi is much better than a cheap router.
I like the challenge of their routers, i have a hap ac2, but man to set some things up feels like a mission. Definitely feels great accomplishing it afterwards though
Yeah but they’re a bitch and a half to configure correctly, and their GUI interface only works on Windows, leaving those of us on the superior Unix-based OS’s out in the cold…
Cake is a bit annoyingly processing heavy - most consumer routers don't have the cpu power or hardware offloads to handle it at gigabit speeds (and mine tends to choke above a couple hundred megabits). That said, latency is _much_ more important than bandwidth most of the time lately in my experience.
Nice, checked mine, got a C (+100ms). QOS was enabled in my Netgear router, but had 'detect speed' selected. I changed that to manual, and put in the speeds I was getting through waveform and ended up with an A (+15ms). I do wonder if they might be getting a lot of traffic, so I will try back at some point again too.
lower QoS speeds in settings will make it more-restrictive; this can slightly decrease max speed but helps improve ping/bufferbloat a lot during "peak load" when the ISP's equipment slows slightly
One more note is you guys should do reviews of all the systems and what the bandwidth limits of them are with this enabled. I actually had to make huge upgraded to my network a while ago and get the Dream Machine Pro to get good QoS performance and it was actually very difficult to find good quantitative data. I also know the Mikrotik routers tend to be awesome at this…
other way to fix it for wired connexion is to limit the link between the router and the computer : if I have for example 500mbps real internet speed, I can force the speed auto negociation on ethernet nic for device to use 100mbps full duplex (in windows properties or router setting for some models) So if someone in my home watch netflix he will download the video at 100mbps that suffisent for 4k (netflix recommend 15mbps for that resolution) but the 400mbps are free for other computers so we can have 5 computer/device with 100mbps dedicated speed that is enough for almost every domestic usage and this solution cost 0$ other way is to reduce the MTU to reduce the size of each packets send : it will slightly reduce global speed for large request like streaming (because we send more paquet) but the single paquet from the video game have more chance to slip between 2 from the netflix streaming
This does not always work. It pays in this case to have fq_codel running natively on the 100Mbit link. YES! no shaping is required if you have a connection running at the native rate of the interface and fq_codel or cake on it. I generally have in sub-20mbit scenarious reduced the MSS, not the MTU, to a lower value, with good results at 560MSS or so.
another good solution is to limit your upstream to slightly less than your line rate (ideally on each system in your network so it's limited before it gets to the router but obviously this isn't possible on all devices and could be a management pain), thus the buffer shouldn't get filled or filled as quickly. Can also affect with downstream but more often than not your upstream is more limited than downstream exaggerating the problem but it can happen both directions and some routers could have one buffer for both or two separate buffers for up and down respectively.
Another helpful tip is that if your experiencing buffer bloat only over WiFi because there are just so many users, switching to WiFi6 will dramatically help since it can communicate with all clients at the same time.
@@Youdontknow591 when you setup a router that supports 5Ghz and 6Ghz, in the router's IP Address/settings page, it will have the option to setup both 5Ghz and 6Ghz WLANs, so that the devices that only support 5Ghz may connect to that one.
@@richie61745 If you have WiFi 6, the OFDMA feature is backwards compatible. Between OFDMA, larger bands, MU-MIMO, QoS, and limiting bandwidth per device, you can easily solve WiFi related lag issues. Other clients don't need WiFi 6 for this to work.
From what I have seen, the bigger issue is lack of RAM in the devices in question. If they only have 256MB's of memory in the routers, they are not going to be able to handle multiple users doing multiple things. They need 4GB RAM or more nowadays but manufacturers keep on cheaping out.
I've deployed FQ_CoDel at scale and you need less then 50 MB per household. While a low end MIBSBE processor will struggle in some instances, RAM requirements is minimal per interface you are doing limiting on. I personally have been running my house on queues using less then 35MB of RAM.
@@eduardosantiago6948 on my router sqm isn't even on there it only says QoS and i can choose between different algorithms. (Like cake) So the sqm is just one of the algorithms you are refering to.
Sounds like either there is equipment failing or they are doing work that requires interrupting the service for a bit. I'm on AT&T fiber and don't see those issues. However, since more people have gotten the service I do see that my upload speeds have dropped from 700-800Mbps down to 30-50Mbps while the download speeds consistently hit 800-900Mbps. So no where near the synchronous speeds I got when the connection was first set up.
A decent router (based on important features and performance) is the single best thing you can do for your home network. Previously I couldn't do wifi video calls without choppiness. Now, for the first time ever I can play FPS games over WIFI. The wireless connection has been nothing but stable. No hiccups ever.
@@MaxMustermann-vy7ur I have a UDM and a UDM pro on the two networks I run. The Dream Router replaces the UDM now, and it's supposed to be even better, but if I upgrade my home, it will be to a UDM Pro. I love the one I have at work. It's turbo reliable and full of features. Best router on the market IMO. I also run Unifi Lite APs. They're really good bang for the buck if you need more coverage.
I had at fist time B, then I set QoS device priority of my tp-link AX50 on my PC and now it is A+. I don't know if this is the same setting, but the result is great. Thanks for the tip.
Anytime Tech Quickie releases a video, the term collectively gets sent to the brains of all the wannabe smart guys. Glad to see this one finally made it...
To explain it a bit less funky: Manufacturers have put excessive buffers in their product, causing internet packets to be queued longer. In times of congestion, usually congested nodes (routers - not only home routers, etc.) drop (delete) packets. On the ends of the connection, this is recognized as packet loss. Packet loss thus is an indication for congestion. Therefore, the sender will adjust its sending rate, which lowers congestion. If buffers are very large, no packets are dropped, thus the ends of the connection don‘t realize that there is congestion, thus sending at the same data rate, thus increasing congestion further. If your home router has excessive buffers, this can cause bufferbloat under high network load. Active Queue Management (AQM) can here simulate the functionality of a smaller buffer: Already before the buffer becomes full, it will start to drop some packets at increasing rates to signal congestion. From a general standpoint, this is the best way: It fully works with existing congestion control / avoidance algorithms of protocols (e.g. TCP Reno), and can also be implemented on all network nodes, not just your home network devices. Quality of Service (QoS) reserves some space of the buffer for prioritized packets / applications, that can bypass a large queue, thus bypassing bufferbloat in some sense. This approach does not help you, if a node of your ISP is causing buffer bloat.
I tried enabling it in my OpenWRT router and I went from 34ms additional latency to 4ms. Success! And my speeds didn't go down! Also finally I know what this problem is, that when you download, your game lag skyrockets heh.
I've noticed that my router's QoS setting is fine for local buffer bloat, but my problem if buffer bloat at the ISP. And I think the only option I have is to wait for Xfinity to install their new fiber lines in my area (already mostly done), and they should be doing better on that front, since they aren't as limited as my local copper-based ISP that hasn't been upgraded since 2005. And the bufferbloat score I got was F, with a 500ms drop on upload saturation.
WOW! Thanks for the buffer bloat info! I have alwayse run openwrt, but was unaware of this 'issue'. I installed the QoS package and followed directions on the site and went from C to A+ rating, and i have noticed a difference in CoD and Rocket League as well. Thanks!
please help me imagine teaching a caveman lol this has been plaguing me for almost 10 years and i live in an apt building and could never figure out why my games never feel snappy online as oppose to offline or when i just play at other people places i can notice the feel is better aswell , or the odd time late at night my games can run nice i just dont get it
Could bufferbloat be the reason that the wired Parsec stream from my basement occasionally hiccups? Or does this apply only to traffic going out to the WAN?
This is a great primer on the subject, although I think the supermarket analogy is a little flawed and there's a lot more detail to know to make good decisions on the topic. Generally speaking, if your internet is fast enough, you may not have any real issues with bufferbloat, it is much more likely on a connection that has contention. Also note that you trade some of your max speed (up to 10%) as a trade-off for the better latency and service times. Finally, it's not as simple as simply installing a new firmware on any old router - the SQM algorithms are heavily CPU dependant, and on many consumer routers, this will absolutely be the limiting factor - cheaper routers will not be able to process faster than say 80/100mb which effectively puts a hard cap on your internet speeds. In fact if you want to go all out and have SQM on say gigabit internet you will need a router that has a relatively hefty CPU. Ubiquiti Dream Machine and Dream Machine Pros are capable of that for instance, but they are quite expensive devices. It also doesn't necessarily solve contention from an individual machine - so if you're downloading a pile of torrents and trying to game on the same machine, you may still have issues. Not to mention WiFi - which is its own black art. Check out the RUclips channel Battlenonsense for some other info on this. Definitely worth a deeper dive at some point to show setting it up and the benefits
Excellent overview, but very surprised you don’t mention forced double NAT. Especially in Canada, the ISPs force customers to use the modem/router combo and you cannot turn off NAT. Then when you add a CAKE/CoDel router behind it you get hit with a bunch of sub-optimal speedbumps (no uPnP, no port forwarding, latency drop from both routers processing each packet, etc)
@@Timothy003L Not if your ISP also disables the modem’s ability to do bridge mode. Or do you mean adding a CAKE-enabled router in bridge mode, and then running the wifi behind that as well?
@@JB-fh1bb Yes. Disable DHCP on your router, bridge the WAN port to the LAN, and connect all devices through it. It'll act like a switch with the ability to control traffic on the WAN interface. Bonus points if you can disable the Wi-Fi on the ISP modem.
@@Timothy003L Hey. Thanks for that! I had this incorrect assumption that the CoDel device also had to be the one routing packets to the internet. I never even considered that you could use these algos on a transparent bridge. Ended up deep-diving on that and sharpening up my knowledge, so that's a win.
Another way to help with this is to get everything that has a LAN port onto a wired connection. Fewer WiFi devices means fewer packets in the WiFi buffer. Wired connections don't suffer this problem.
Bin ISP supplied router. Add switch for wired devices and separate wireless access point(s) plugged into switch for everything else. Enjoy better stability.
They also often advertise these crazy high internet speeds that are "possible" - not necessarily at your location though... Always depends on what's underground going in your house and if that's ancient/outdated stuff it can't be helped 😑
QoS provides guaranteed bandwidth to certain applications. SQM divides the bandwidth fairly. If you have enough bandwidth for everything, use SQM. Otherwise, use QoS.
Well lack of bandwidth defo can be an issue as well. We only have 36 mbps download and 5 mpbs upload. Even with SQM there is still bufferbloat. Once we get fibre we should get 100 mpbs up and down so that will likely solve the issue alongside using SQM.
I think we can reduce the buffer bloat in normal routers that don't support AQM by lowering the RTS threshold. RTS threshold breakdown the packet any larger to what is set in the settings.
A few months ago I got a rank of D (13ms unloaded, +9 down and +313 up), so whenever anyone was uploading anything uncapped the entire network would grind to a halt and services would fail. That was a Telstra Smart Modem.. not so smart after all I since changed to a Xiaomi AX3000 2-pack mesh, very cost effective, faster 5Ghz and clever prioritising for solid wireless VR gaming and best of all, we now score an A (5ms, +7ms, +11ms) [Edit]: I should also add the Telstra modem could not enable QoS without a firmware flash, and the Xiaomi CAN but I have not enabled it yet.. so this improvement comes from other aspects of how the routers function.
I’ve personally have never heard of the term bufferbloat before now. I’ve also never heard of a router not having some sort of QoS ability or be able to just set priority for certain IP’s. That’s exactly how I have it at my home network. My gaming pc has highest network priority and everything else on network is secondary.
I did the test on extended WiFi networks on 2.5GHz approx 80mbps connection and had RUclips running on mobile and few chrome tabs open on laptop and got A+ rating 😋
Can you let me k ow if your games were feeling sluggish/ unpleasant on the eyes like mine ? Making competetive gaming at any level completely ruined lol
No mention that if you DO have faster Internet, a lot of routers wont handle high speeds with these features enabled? AFAIK there are zero consumer routers that can do Gigabit with QoS enabled and you might still need it if your upstream is much lower, as that's really where you want to do queue management, downstream is mostly reliant on your ISPs end. Fortunately with something like pfSense you can enable it for upstream only.
eero can handle 1 Gbps with Optimize for Conferencing and Gaming enabled. SQM works on downstream, too, as long as a standing queue builds on the router. Usually, this means shaping traffic to 85% of the normal speed.
The right way is really to use QoS, but most home/SOHO routers don't support QoS. Heck, even Ubiquiti UniFi routers (gateways) which are enterprise class (or atleast SMB class) doesn't really support QoS. It does have queues, but the conventional wisdom in the Ubiquiti UniFi community seems to be to disable queues. I also find that as much as I prefer to use Firefox (which I do as it's been my daily driver for well over a decade since I switched from SeaMonkey), bufferbloat is worse when compared to Chrome on the same speed tests (typically dslreports) on the same PC run back to back
Sometimes I wish we go back to the old days when IE uses Temporary Internet Files that made loading instantly without having to re-download the same cache over and over again that only slow things down
However a lot of the time at home installing a custom firmware isn’t an option because of you being restricted to using the router provided by your ISP with that router having a custom firmware by your ISP which also includes modem protocols that allow your router to connect to your ISP’s network.
I live in Germany. What is internet?
The thing with that weird light wire that our neighboring countries have every where...
bruh your country is like 1st world and a hub for innovation what you smoking
Sorry, telling you might get you in trouble.
You probably have less then 30ms ping for any server in EU while I must live with a best case of 86ms while a average of 120ms so don't complain. PREMIUM INTERNET SPEED IS 20MBPS FFS WITH 100GB PER MONTH.
it is a 56k modem if your "aufm dorf"
it's annoying when the bufferbloat does not occur on your own router but the last accumulation point at your ISP when your neighbors might stream netflix/amazon 4K in the evening and you're trying to game
I wouldn't be surprised if many ISPs don't do anything about this.
Fiber fixes that. FTTH ftw
noise on the cable line, installer thinks its possibly a neighbor with a bad cable box so there's nothing they can do for me.. just comcastic. small town has a fiber ISP that sent out fliers, but only in new developments.. just buy a new house /s.
Choose a different ISP that uses better technology, such as fibre, for every shared stage of your connection.
@@BrianG61UK not possible for me here where i live, only available technology is DSL and only one provider that offers more than 2mbit/s (location is Germany by the way)
You might want to caution users not to enable this feature unless they’re actually experiencing problems. Many of these algorithms work by adding an intentional delay to packets before sending them out to provide time for sorting.
If you’re not experiencing latency issues, you’ll pay the toll of a small latency increase for no reason.
QoS is famous for causing you to fail to get all the speed that you actually pay for. virtually always I get lower speed test results with these features enabled.
To expand on the example of a line at the grocery store, imagine that the person who rearranges the line has to get out from behind the counter to do that, and if there are only two people in line, making a big deal over the order like asking customers how quickly they need service could be slower than just processing people immediately.
I think the point was it doesn't matter how fast your Internet if your router cannot process the data immediately. I could be wrong tho 🙈 FUD
Cake ->Piece of Cake is the way.
yup, especially if you have a high speed fiber, normal consumer router cannot handle that kind of load, especially sqm aka cake, it's an intensive processor & memory process. Furthermore, nowadays most of the latency is isp induced, nothing can be done other than changing isp.
QoS is an inherently single-threaded procedure, so getting good speeds with it enabled requires a rather beefy CPU, by router standards.
FINALLY LMD APPROACHES THIS.
We need more people to know about bufferbloat because it really is a pain in the ass. The router from my isp has neither QoS or a fast enough processor.
I suggest buying a new router
Wouldn‘t this only affect your home network then? To my knowledge, most internet congestion still occurs outside of the local network. That’s why we have all these fancy routing protocols
Does it support Active Queue Management (AQM)?
Finally an explanation for what I've been dealing with. I couldn't figure out how I could get good speeds but bad buffering for things like videoconferencing. Ugh.
A suggestion... talking about prioritizing packets (essentially QoS) only affects your LAN (& WLAN)... You should mention the common problem with over-subscription at home ISP's - which you can't fix by enabling QoS in your home network. There is also the perspective with different type of Internet connections (for example, Cable Internet (Docsis) is a shared medium, which it self can lead to latency issues at peak hours).
Problem is, your router is not the only buffer. All the routers that are part of the Internet contain buffers in some sense. You can’t help it if your ISP router upstream is having the same problem.
Yeah i was on Cable internet and in evening streaming got really laggy.
Don't get cable. That almost never happens on my VDSL2 connection.
If your router supports bandwidth shaping you can test your bandwidth during peak hours: and set your router to keep your connection speed *just below that*.
Of course you may want to recheck periodically. Apparently Telus doubled out burstable speed in the past year (was 75Mbps, is now 150Mbps).
Yeah that seems to be a common problem for legacy DSL internet connections as well (which does still exist out in rural areas. Many still have no internet at all).
i have this exact issue at my parents house. i didn't know what the issue was until now, thanks Techquickie!
Although I will always be a wired connection elitist, Wifi 6 has pleasantly surprised me.
I had another solution to this on an older tp-link router (can't remember exact model, it was a popular cheap one), I limited the bandwidth to lower than what the isp gives for everything except the pc I used. And it worked!
This worked for me ! From B -> A, thanks
@Z3U5 bandwidth control. But I just looked it up, it's the same thing. So yeah.
@Z3U5 its the speed auto negotiation settings generally used when the ethernet link is poor quality he downgrade automatically the speed for stability
but we can force it :
If I have for example 500mbps real internet speed, I can force the speed auto negociation on ethernet nic for each device to use 100mbps full duplex (in windows properties or router settings for some models)
So if someone in my home watch netflix he will download the video at 100mbps that suffisent for 4k (netflix recommend 15mbps for that resolution) but the 400mbps are free for other computers
In conclusion we can have 5 computer/device with 100mbps dedicated speed that is enough for almost every domestic usage and this solution cost 0$
One of the few tests in my life that I got an A+ on, so that is at least something.
mine D
@@knight5959 I got an F 💀
@@Alex-tu5vu what router you using? Tweek the settings a little bit
I just want to thank you guys for covering a topic that's been on my mind since the pandemic started. A lot of the fighting game peeps I know don't know about bufferbloat and how it affects them and it just becomes a "not fun" time whenever bufferbloat is actually the cause. I have an IQRouter V3 and it works very well with a cable provider I use on a high download / low upload connection. I installed OpenWRT on a very old netgear router as well but it cuts off wireless capabilities and the hardware could only handle so much at a time, it's still a good Router OS on its own.
If you have an old PC, you could add a second NIC to it and install something like pfSense or IPFire, then flash your old router back to stock firmware to get wifi back.
0:16 "if you do say your so yourself"
IQRouters are great! Only downside is if you have more than a 500MB connection, it can’t adequately work if you are maxing out that bandwidth across devices. Also, their support is second to none!
Do you mean 500Mbps? 500MBps would be about 4Gbps…
@@bclaus0 4 Gbps
Props to the graphics team, that "Dated and Related" image made me choke on my drink laughing.
That dated & related poster had me rollin
There's also a feature called airtime fairness (your router probably has it since its a 10year old technology), its really effective at solving this problem by ensuring that each device on a network gets the same bandwidth by allocating the same time to transmit and receive data packets.
I find airtime fairness to almost ALWAYS be counter productive and leave disabled. If I see it enabled, I disable it and if there were any WiFi issues, they tend to get noticeably better.
I like to rely on more standardised IEEE certified solutions as they tend to cause less problems...unless you're dealing with Apple devices (specifically the roaming standards, I usually turn off because of so many Apple devices that tend not to work when these are enabled even if Apple says they support them).
@@technerd9655 I'd like to point out that MANY former implementations of ATF were very flawed because they did not do FQ or compensate for bufferbloat. ATF is now on by default in many openwrt based routers based on the fq_codel for wifi implementation, for the mt76, ath9k, ath10k, and ax210 chips. If you encounter a problem with that implementation, please contact the authors of "ending the anomaly", the paper that documents how it works.
I knew smh was wrong with my s2s vpn, switching qos mode to cake gave 2-3x boost in bandwidth. And test result went from C to B on the worse side. You are lifesavers!
Why have I never heard of this before? Finally an answer as to why somthing as simple as watching youtube used to result in garbage pings if somone else was gaming in the house, it seems to have gotten a lot better with faster internet tough. Unfortunantly my router dosn't support SQM or anything like that so anything that really utilises the connect like a large donwload would probably still cause issues with games.
Parts like “if you do say you so yourself” at 0:18 feel so golden because this channel is so polished it’s like some cool discovery when even a millisecond sounds not.
I wonder if they script the unpolished parts just to make viewers like me feel like we caught something.
Of course they do. See Tom Scott's recent video on why many RUclipsrs clap at the start of their videos. If it was just for sync purposes it wouldn't make the final edit.
it's like those terrible instagram memes with intentional typos. They know a ton of people is going to correct them in the comments
I've been told by a network person that the traffic shaping features in routers don't really work, since they require much more processing power than their chips can handle. It seems like queue management is a simpler feature though, just for gaming and communication packets, as opposed to prioritizing all the traffic of all the devices on the network.
if you build yoru own router it should be able to handle it . especially with a modern cpu lol.
If a consumer router offers such features, probably true. However, if you get something with just a little power it can more than handle it and it does help. My recommendations are to either build your own router or look into Mikrotik. There are Mikrotik routers for $200-$300 that are pretty darn powerful and compare to $2,000+ cisco devices.
Depends entirely on your Internet speed.
The CPU on my wired Ubiquity router is apparently good for 200-300Mbps, which is higher than my 150Mbps connection speed.
I plan to have most of the LAN traffic bypass my router by using the ISP-supplied router as an Access point/switch.
im a network engineer, the long and short is that it depends on if the other routers down the line will respect the tag you assign them... which i doubt they will. One thing to note is that traffic shaping and QoS only ocures if there is congestion. Buying a faster internet link to your service provider can provide you with a connection that has no need to buffer packets and therefore wont even begin to use a QoS system like this. Im not super well versed in the proprietary home network QoS solutions but this feature could only possibly be useful if you have a very congested network or other devices from your ISP were gonna respect the tags giving you overall lower latency across the entire trip.
The eero 6 and 6 Pro can do SQM at line rate. They implement FQ-CoDel in hardware.
not even an internet repair dude guy anymore but I still appreciate this.
For me Mikrotik Routers works like charm especially with Queue Tree. Tricky though. Also OpenWRT + Adguard in Raspberry Pi is much better than a cheap router.
Mikrotik
I like the challenge of their routers, i have a hap ac2, but man to set some things up feels like a mission. Definitely feels great accomplishing it afterwards though
Yeah but they’re a bitch and a half to configure correctly, and their GUI interface only works on Windows, leaving those of us on the superior Unix-based OS’s out in the cold…
RouterOS 7.2 and later have a nice version of cake.
@@Ebalosus Might be a necropost, but WinBox works under Wine
I use open WRT and cake for years and it makes a night and day difference. Tuning cake is a bit fickle, but worth the effort
Cake is a bit annoyingly processing heavy - most consumer routers don't have the cpu power or hardware offloads to handle it at gigabit speeds (and mine tends to choke above a couple hundred megabits). That said, latency is _much_ more important than bandwidth most of the time lately in my experience.
@@keithduthie especially a consistent latency aka low jitter
Nice, checked mine, got a C (+100ms). QOS was enabled in my Netgear router, but had 'detect speed' selected. I changed that to manual, and put in the speeds I was getting through waveform and ended up with an A (+15ms).
I do wonder if they might be getting a lot of traffic, so I will try back at some point again too.
damn I have an F 💀
lower QoS speeds in settings will make it more-restrictive; this can slightly decrease max speed but helps improve ping/bufferbloat a lot during "peak load" when the ISP's equipment slows slightly
yeh they shouldve mentioned it works best if u tell the router what the speed limit is so it can throttle packets before they get dropped by the isp
Good explanation! Learned about this a few years ago and fixed my issues using pfSense QoS
whats pfSense QoS?
@@Mr.Mooody Quality of Service, pfSense has a great wizard that pretty much does it all for you. Edit: it’s called traffic shaper in pfSense, whoops.
@@cuttercanfixit does it work on all routers? regardless of brand?
Excellent idea to talk about this its a big problem most of us are not aware of
We absolutely need a stand alone pfsense build and run video from LTT proper
Love the animations lol, Riley is excellent as always
OpenWrt dev here ... dthat sent me here, love Ya for spreading the love for good code!
Super interesting quickie, I learned on something I truly was wondering about.
I can't get _DATED & RELATED_ out of my mind now though 😂
One more note is you guys should do reviews of all the systems and what the bandwidth limits of them are with this enabled. I actually had to make huge upgraded to my network a while ago and get the Dream Machine Pro to get good QoS performance and it was actually very difficult to find good quantitative data. I also know the Mikrotik routers tend to be awesome at this…
Bro PLEASE make a full tutorial video on ltt doing all this stuff, building ur own router n everythingg, it seriously deserves it
Thanks Riley! I was watching this while giving my son a snack and now he is shouting "BUFFERBLOAT" around the house.
that Dated & Related poster at 1:26, was the final push I needed to grab floatplane.
now if its not there I will be disappointed.
other way to fix it for wired connexion is to limit the link between the router and the computer :
if I have for example 500mbps real internet speed, I can force the speed auto negociation on ethernet nic for device to use 100mbps full duplex (in windows properties or router setting for some models)
So if someone in my home watch netflix he will download the video at 100mbps that suffisent for 4k (netflix recommend 15mbps for that resolution) but the 400mbps are free for other computers
so we can have 5 computer/device with 100mbps dedicated speed that is enough for almost every domestic usage and this solution cost 0$
other way is to reduce the MTU to reduce the size of each packets send : it will slightly reduce global speed for large request like streaming (because we send more paquet) but the single paquet from the video game have more chance to slip between 2 from the netflix streaming
This does not always work. It pays in this case to have fq_codel running natively on the 100Mbit link. YES! no shaping is required if you have a connection running at the native rate of the interface and fq_codel or cake on it.
I generally have in sub-20mbit scenarious reduced the MSS, not the MTU, to a lower value, with good results at 560MSS or so.
Thanks! I've always wondered if there was a convenient web tool to measure buffer bloat.
another good solution is to limit your upstream to slightly less than your line rate (ideally on each system in your network so it's limited before it gets to the router but obviously this isn't possible on all devices and could be a management pain), thus the buffer shouldn't get filled or filled as quickly. Can also affect with downstream but more often than not your upstream is more limited than downstream exaggerating the problem but it can happen both directions and some routers could have one buffer for both or two separate buffers for up and down respectively.
Another helpful tip is that if your experiencing buffer bloat only over WiFi because there are just so many users, switching to WiFi6 will dramatically help since it can communicate with all clients at the same time.
Worth noting that both the router and your computer must support it for there to be a benefit
@@richie61745 Right. If you have some devices that only support wifi 5, does that ruin it for everyone or maybe just partially?
@@Youdontknow591 when you setup a router that supports 5Ghz and 6Ghz, in the router's IP Address/settings page, it will have the option to setup both 5Ghz and 6Ghz WLANs, so that the devices that only support 5Ghz may connect to that one.
@@richie61745 If you have WiFi 6, the OFDMA feature is backwards compatible. Between OFDMA, larger bands, MU-MIMO, QoS, and limiting bandwidth per device, you can easily solve WiFi related lag issues. Other clients don't need WiFi 6 for this to work.
@@bustaballs Legacy clients don't understand HE frames. How can OFDMA be backwards compatible?
From what I have seen, the bigger issue is lack of RAM in the devices in question. If they only have 256MB's of memory in the routers, they are not going to be able to handle multiple users doing multiple things.
They need 4GB RAM or more nowadays but manufacturers keep on cheaping out.
I've deployed FQ_CoDel at scale and you need less then 50 MB per household. While a low end MIBSBE processor will struggle in some instances, RAM requirements is minimal per interface you are doing limiting on.
I personally have been running my house on queues using less then 35MB of RAM.
actually bufferbloat exists because their is to much memory, the solution is to use less than is installed
This was quite a useful quickie, even for a network nerd like myself.
Another name is QoS(Quality of Service) which priorities the packets on types. Which helps a lot.
Not the same thing. You could say sqm is a smart qos
@@eduardosantiago6948 on my router sqm isn't even on there it only says QoS and i can choose between different algorithms. (Like cake) So the sqm is just one of the algorithms you are refering to.
@@sunnisun36 That's why you should install Openwrt, which is a firmware that has sqm (I think this was mentioned in the video...)
love the portal reference
So what's going on when our at&t internet randomly cuts out completely for everyone for anywhere from 5-30 minutes several times a day?
Sounds like either there is equipment failing or they are doing work that requires interrupting the service for a bit. I'm on AT&T fiber and don't see those issues. However, since more people have gotten the service I do see that my upload speeds have dropped from 700-800Mbps down to 30-50Mbps while the download speeds consistently hit 800-900Mbps. So no where near the synchronous speeds I got when the connection was first set up.
Wonderful! Thanks!!!!
A decent router (based on important features and performance) is the single best thing you can do for your home network. Previously I couldn't do wifi video calls without choppiness. Now, for the first time ever I can play FPS games over WIFI. The wireless connection has been nothing but stable. No hiccups ever.
omg now "hogging up the wifi" is a phrase I'll never hear ever again. Thank you.
On Unifi, I had to enable the legacy UI, and enable "Smart Queues" to fix it. Went from an F to an A+
What uniquiti setup you using? Is it reliable?
@@MaxMustermann-vy7ur I have a UDM and a UDM pro on the two networks I run. The Dream Router replaces the UDM now, and it's supposed to be even better, but if I upgrade my home, it will be to a UDM Pro. I love the one I have at work. It's turbo reliable and full of features. Best router on the market IMO. I also run Unifi Lite APs. They're really good bang for the buck if you need more coverage.
@@meikgeik thx i might try the dream maschine router and unifi 6 lw or pro access point
I had at fist time B, then I set QoS device priority of my tp-link AX50 on my PC and now it is A+. I don't know if this is the same setting, but the result is great. Thanks for the tip.
This is an excellent video. It doesn't seem to address the drawbacks resulting from _how_ this features works on routers, but its a great explainer!
Anytime Tech Quickie releases a video, the term collectively gets sent to the brains of all the wannabe smart guys. Glad to see this one finally made it...
To explain it a bit less funky:
Manufacturers have put excessive buffers in their product, causing internet packets to be queued longer.
In times of congestion, usually congested nodes (routers - not only home routers, etc.) drop (delete) packets. On the ends of the connection, this is recognized as packet loss. Packet loss thus is an indication for congestion.
Therefore, the sender will adjust its sending rate, which lowers congestion.
If buffers are very large, no packets are dropped, thus the ends of the connection don‘t realize that there is congestion, thus sending at the same data rate, thus increasing congestion further.
If your home router has excessive buffers, this can cause bufferbloat under high network load. Active Queue Management (AQM) can here simulate the functionality of a smaller buffer: Already before the buffer becomes full, it will start to drop some packets at increasing rates to signal congestion. From a general standpoint, this is the best way: It fully works with existing congestion control / avoidance algorithms of protocols (e.g. TCP Reno), and can also be implemented on all network nodes, not just your home network devices. Quality of Service (QoS) reserves some space of the buffer for prioritized packets / applications, that can bypass a large queue, thus bypassing bufferbloat in some sense.
This approach does not help you, if a node of your ISP is causing buffer bloat.
I tried enabling it in my OpenWRT router and I went from 34ms additional latency to 4ms. Success! And my speeds didn't go down!
Also finally I know what this problem is, that when you download, your game lag skyrockets heh.
I've noticed that my router's QoS setting is fine for local buffer bloat, but my problem if buffer bloat at the ISP. And I think the only option I have is to wait for Xfinity to install their new fiber lines in my area (already mostly done), and they should be doing better on that front, since they aren't as limited as my local copper-based ISP that hasn't been upgraded since 2005.
And the bufferbloat score I got was F, with a 500ms drop on upload saturation.
WOW! Thanks for the buffer bloat info! I have alwayse run openwrt, but was unaware of this 'issue'. I installed the QoS package and followed directions on the site and went from C to A+ rating, and i have noticed a difference in CoD and Rocket League as well. Thanks!
please help me imagine teaching a caveman lol this has been plaguing me for almost 10 years and i live in an apt building and could never figure out why my games never feel snappy online as oppose to offline or when i just play at other people places i can notice the feel is better aswell , or the odd time late at night my games can run nice i just dont get it
Could bufferbloat be the reason that the wired Parsec stream from my basement occasionally hiccups? Or does this apply only to traffic going out to the WAN?
This is a great primer on the subject, although I think the supermarket analogy is a little flawed and there's a lot more detail to know to make good decisions on the topic. Generally speaking, if your internet is fast enough, you may not have any real issues with bufferbloat, it is much more likely on a connection that has contention.
Also note that you trade some of your max speed (up to 10%) as a trade-off for the better latency and service times.
Finally, it's not as simple as simply installing a new firmware on any old router - the SQM algorithms are heavily CPU dependant, and on many consumer routers, this will absolutely be the limiting factor - cheaper routers will not be able to process faster than say 80/100mb which effectively puts a hard cap on your internet speeds.
In fact if you want to go all out and have SQM on say gigabit internet you will need a router that has a relatively hefty CPU. Ubiquiti Dream Machine and Dream Machine Pros are capable of that for instance, but they are quite expensive devices.
It also doesn't necessarily solve contention from an individual machine - so if you're downloading a pile of torrents and trying to game on the same machine, you may still have issues. Not to mention WiFi - which is its own black art.
Check out the RUclips channel Battlenonsense for some other info on this.
Definitely worth a deeper dive at some point to show setting it up and the benefits
You actually made me learn something new and useful that'll help me diagnose internet connections for gaming. Thanks a tonne!!!!
This actually answers my question for whats happening with my connection
Excellent overview, but very surprised you don’t mention forced double NAT. Especially in Canada, the ISPs force customers to use the modem/router combo and you cannot turn off NAT. Then when you add a CAKE/CoDel router behind it you get hit with a bunch of sub-optimal speedbumps (no uPnP, no port forwarding, latency drop from both routers processing each packet, etc)
You can use bridge mode to fix that.
@@Timothy003L Not if your ISP also disables the modem’s ability to do bridge mode.
Or do you mean adding a CAKE-enabled router in bridge mode, and then running the wifi behind that as well?
@@JB-fh1bb Yes. Disable DHCP on your router, bridge the WAN port to the LAN, and connect all devices through it. It'll act like a switch with the ability to control traffic on the WAN interface. Bonus points if you can disable the Wi-Fi on the ISP modem.
@@Timothy003L Hey. Thanks for that! I had this incorrect assumption that the CoDel device also had to be the one routing packets to the internet. I never even considered that you could use these algos on a transparent bridge. Ended up deep-diving on that and sharpening up my knowledge, so that's a win.
These side commentary images in this video are excellent.
Another way to help with this is to get everything that has a LAN port onto a wired connection. Fewer WiFi devices means fewer packets in the WiFi buffer. Wired connections don't suffer this problem.
This issue can also be a problem on cellular networks and public wifi networks when too many devices are connected to s as single tower/server.
Bin ISP supplied router. Add switch for wired devices and separate wireless access point(s) plugged into switch for everything else. Enjoy better stability.
Thanks!
WIFI 6 can trasfer data across devices simultaneously, so bufferbload is not really a problem but the technology is more expensive.
They also often advertise these crazy high internet speeds that are "possible" - not necessarily at your location though...
Always depends on what's underground going in your house and if that's ancient/outdated stuff it can't be helped 😑
lol that is true. I pay for 500mbits and i get a whole 30.
I don't have bufferbloat, but I enabled those settings just in case it gets worse. Thank you, LTT!
Wait, cake that ISN'T a lie?! o.0
portal
Thanks
1:44 BRO MY INTERNET JUST DECIDED
"Hmm let's pause this video"
That scared the living hell out of me
what about quality of service (qos)? is it the same? or can you use both?
I'm not a doctor, but I think QoS would do it too, if set up right
QoS provides guaranteed bandwidth to certain applications. SQM divides the bandwidth fairly.
If you have enough bandwidth for everything, use SQM. Otherwise, use QoS.
3:39 Portal 😁
Can you please make more Networking Videos it's really fun to watch it
Great wolf lodge guest internet got an F but that’s better than my cell service lol
Well lack of bandwidth defo can be an issue as well. We only have 36 mbps download and 5 mpbs upload. Even with SQM there is still bufferbloat. Once we get fibre we should get 100 mpbs up and down so that will likely solve the issue alongside using SQM.
I think we can reduce the buffer bloat in normal routers that don't support AQM by lowering the RTS threshold. RTS threshold breakdown the packet any larger to what is set in the settings.
A few months ago I got a rank of D (13ms unloaded, +9 down and +313 up), so whenever anyone was uploading anything uncapped the entire network would grind to a halt and services would fail.
That was a Telstra Smart Modem.. not so smart after all
I since changed to a Xiaomi AX3000 2-pack mesh, very cost effective, faster 5Ghz and clever prioritising for solid wireless VR gaming and best of all, we now score an A (5ms, +7ms, +11ms)
[Edit]: I should also add the Telstra modem could not enable QoS without a firmware flash, and the Xiaomi CAN but I have not enabled it yet.. so this improvement comes from other aspects of how the routers function.
I use CODEL on my pfSense box, I host a lot of LAN parties at my apartment and it works wonders
I have B and what it tells me is that the problem is not really due to buffer bloat but just due to slow internet
I’ve personally have never heard of the term bufferbloat before now. I’ve also never heard of a router not having some sort of QoS ability or be able to just set priority for certain IP’s. That’s exactly how I have it at my home network. My gaming pc has highest network priority and everything else on network is secondary.
i was legitimately thinking about this today!
I did the test on extended WiFi networks on 2.5GHz approx 80mbps connection and had RUclips running on mobile and few chrome tabs open on laptop and got A+ rating 😋
any kind of queing set will do the effect, different vendor - different queue name
Oh my.... 1:26 ROFL Luke's expression!
Huh, this might be the reason my computer's internet craps out when I have my phone streaming video or audio. Definitely something to look into!
Never really thought about fixing these sorts of things 🤔I will need to look into this more.
Finally, got no more problems in my life, only thing i needed.
Grasias
Can you let me k ow if your games were feeling sluggish/ unpleasant on the eyes like mine ? Making competetive gaming at any level completely ruined lol
Thank you so much, I've been trying to figure out my shot registry issues for the longest time, I got a C
No mention that if you DO have faster Internet, a lot of routers wont handle high speeds with these features enabled? AFAIK there are zero consumer routers that can do Gigabit with QoS enabled and you might still need it if your upstream is much lower, as that's really where you want to do queue management, downstream is mostly reliant on your ISPs end.
Fortunately with something like pfSense you can enable it for upstream only.
eero can handle 1 Gbps with Optimize for Conferencing and Gaming enabled.
SQM works on downstream, too, as long as a standing queue builds on the router. Usually, this means shaping traffic to 85% of the normal speed.
The right way is really to use QoS, but most home/SOHO routers don't support QoS. Heck, even Ubiquiti UniFi routers (gateways) which are enterprise class (or atleast SMB class) doesn't really support QoS. It does have queues, but the conventional wisdom in the Ubiquiti UniFi community seems to be to disable queues.
I also find that as much as I prefer to use Firefox (which I do as it's been my daily driver for well over a decade since I switched from SeaMonkey), bufferbloat is worse when compared to Chrome on the same speed tests (typically dslreports) on the same PC run back to back
1:45 Could you please tell me the router model or where the video was taken from?
Nice portal reference btw
I got a D. This explains so much weird lag over the years. Time to finally make my own router
Tested mine and got A+. 🤘 using Asus gt-ax6000 router
Most routers have QoS which I would think would achieve the same thing as queue management?
Sometimes I wish we go back to the old days when IE uses Temporary Internet Files that made loading instantly without having to re-download the same cache over and over again that only slow things down
However a lot of the time at home installing a custom firmware isn’t an option because of you being restricted to using the router provided by your ISP with that router having a custom firmware by your ISP which also includes modem protocols that allow your router to connect to your ISP’s network.
Yes, with those routers try to see if it's possible to use them in bridge mode
@@davidrgrech0
I guess that’s something that only some ISP routers would support but I guess newer ones in theory should support it! :)
@@davidrgrech0 Bridge mode? So how you gonna set ? ..
Mine one asking some VCI and VPi sh*t
I love how the word queue and the acronym letter for queue sound exactly the same.
Thanks for covering the topic
got an A+ on this test :)
I am always interested in learning what brands are doing better in these regards out of the box.