Redflame

I’m a fellow Zen user. 900/105, Open reach. I wouldn’t trust ping optimiser too much. One time it told me 7ms like yourself, the second run said my ping was perfect at 100ms. I’ve managed to get a+ manually. I’m using pppoe but also found fritzbox, I found fritzbox in middle wasn’t ideal. Before testing make sure house is quiet and no downloads are taking place. I would suggest the following: 1)) I strongly recommend going in and switching your mtu/enter in 1492. I had lag and changed only mtu and it improved things. 2)) Hardwired into your R3 - go to Speedtest.net and pick zen from the test servers, do about 3. Go to Speedtest on dumaos admin page > click on three dots > advanced > manually enter the avg download and upload. 3)) Either going to router web admin address or Duma os mobile app. Open up ping optimiser and pick advanced (three dots and advanced again). Scroll down to the congestion control part, click on that you’ll see sliders. 4)) Then open another page on a pc/laptop/series x wired into R3. Google bufferbloat test. Pick waveform option. Starting at 95 and test. Then go down by 10 until you get no added lat. When you get good result, they advise to go up by 5 percent to see if you keep result. 5)) After getting no added lat, I usually do a test via wired device on Speedtest.net and fast.com to note that cc is holding up. Speedtest.net usually shows lat on all bits idle, download and upload. Fast.com will show 10ms unloaded and 15ms loaded. 6)) I would like to add that say 85 down and 90 up on cc, could look great on paper A+ no added latency but doesn’t feel great in game.

I did testing as I was able to grab the family laptop, here’s my results. What numbers would you suggest inputting based on my results? BTW I’m impressed that the R3 was able to push my full line considering how cpu heavy pppoe is. Smart boost off 1)) 916 down, 110 up 2)) 921 down, 110 up 3)) 903 down, 109 up Smart boost on, CC sliders set to 100 up and down (to get line speed with qos on) 1)) 837 down, 106 up 2)) 863 down, 106 up

Thanks, I’ve currently input 910/105 into speed yesterday. I did do a speed test with cc set to 100 up and down. I got Speedtest.net outputting 808-834 down and about 105-106 up. But based on previously ones, I would say my speed is about 765-834ish most of time. I’ll do more test. (If I did it with r3 in DMZ it would be 794-888) do you advise testing at quiet time, how many times shall I test per season twice or 3 times? and shall I turn off smart boost/cc off or just turn it up to 100 percent for true speed? note: I’m doing pppoe with r3 connected directly Ont. Speed isn’t important, more stability/low lag

Hey Fraser, I was wondering if I could ask your advice. So to ensure the router is working with all available bandwidth to shape. What should speeds should I enter? The built in speed test can sometimes read download 888-800 and upload can read 111-112, but these are numbers my isp provided for my line. Do I input my plan speeds or go off Netduma os numbers? I previously incorrectly stated I was on 900/115, it’s accurately 900/105. (Although I’m a lucky 20 percent customer who can get 910.) Heres a snapshot of my line’s capabilities that my isp sent me. Your Broadband Speeds Normally available download speed (Kbps)910000 and 910000 Normally available upload speed (Kbps):105000 - 105000 Minimum guaranteed download speed (Kbps):500000 Minimum upload speed (Kbps): 55000 Max download speed (Kbps): 910000 Max upload speed (Kbps): 109000 Advertised download speed (Kbps): 910000 Advertised upload speed (Kbps): 105000

I managed to download it successfully. (I did have a bad gateway hicup but refresh routers ip address and re did it and worked fine. i did my bb testing and found a good value. 85 down and 90 up. I did try the ping optimiser settings from before (95 down and 100 up) but latency rises. Now all that’s left to be seen is if when family stream at peak time if my setting holds up. Thanks so much for all your support Fraser, I really appreciate it. I hope you have a good weekend.

Thanks I’ll try this. Forgive me, but I’m a bit of technical noob. So just plug laptop into R3 via an Ethernet. Download file from here, then go to router admin on page via router getaway address. Then troubleshoot > upload firmware and then upload file and the r3 does it magic? Or something else?

Hi Fraser A bug/glitch kinda happen that I wanted to inform you of. about an hour or two after I done this. WiFi devices were locked to 60mbps down and 90 up. LAN devices were locked to 350 down and 90 up. I turned smart boost off and then on again, removed my console from priority and remove and re added gaming, cod and ea games. I even put my cc sliders back to older values no dice. So I thought it could be Fritzbox or something. So I reset my Ont and Fritzbox. Did dumaos network test that was getting full line speed. But still lower speed persist. The R3 CPU cores look fine, highest was 30 percent so I’m guessing that’s optimal? 4 hours later my network reverted to normal speeds again devices getting 600-700 on download. I’ll do some more testing in regards to bufferbloat though as when I’m gaming people stream and sometimes it can lag me a bit vs if I game and everyone is asleep

So I won’t able to do testing until weekend as we all share the laptop. However I rebooted my R3 and run ping optimiser just to see what it said. I am keeping in mind that you said it could be abnormal. I’ll share results. Download ping seems good, upload though is interesting. I did 3 ping tests to see baseline and jitter.

I see. Maybe my test was glitching out I’ll try the ping. my line as previously mentioned is 900 down and 115 up. Duma OS router speed test sometimes will give me 888 or 907. Upload is 107-105. So I gone in and manually added 900 and 115 Hopefully this will help lock in results. I know 80 percent is a good value for download so I’ll do some more bb testing and focus on upload turning.

Thanks for response. So I did that. I found 75 added no bloat, going up to 80 then offer same result. So 85 and up seems to be bloat city. So for download I stuck on 80. If I had 85 down and 95 up my download values and jitter was below 1ms. If it lower my upload lower, my download ping values increase and jitter could hit 6-15ms. So it seems strongly shaped can add more impact to download. Do you think this is just noise or can capping upload on fttp cause issues?

Thanks. I’ve manage to get back onto my R3. My mother still had Fritzbox in storage so it’s my edge device now. For testing CC - is it best to go onto waveform bufferbloat test move down from 95 and down 10 percent and then up by 5 percent? My ping optimiser is telling me my ping 99-100ms is stable even though my London ping is usually 8-12, this sounds like it may be picking up wrong info? If I do test ping option instead of optimise it does show 8-9ms.

Hello, I ran an R3 from late 2025 to May 2026 on a 900/120 Openreach UK PPPoE line and got excellent results (A+ bufferbloat, only +0-2 ms added latency). Before that I was on a C grade with constant lag. A disabled family member who had two small strokes moved downstairs into a hospital bed for safety. Previous renovations that included knocking down walls and adding ceiling beams etc, caused WiFi coverage became poor on the far side of the house. The R3 was the only router that could reach part of the room with a weak but workable signal. We tried a TP-Link WiFi extender, but it didn’t work well with their streaming setup. So we move towards eero mesh. Because I didn’t have safe desk space to run the full ISP router → R3 → Eero chain, I replaced both the ISP router and the R3 with a full Eero mesh (Eero gateway + Eero 6 nodes). This solved the coverage problem, but has re-introduced noticeable bufferbloat and latency spikes during gaming, even with eero’s SQM enabled. My family member is getting their own extension with dedicated FTTP line soon, so this setup is temporary. I’m planning to go back to the R3 for its much better latency performance. Since I no longer have an ISP router, I need a replacement PPPoE router to sit in front of the R3 without bottlenecking it. Any recommendations or advice? (previous router was fritzbox). Thanks

Hi Fraser, I hope you and your team are having a good week so far. I manage to set it up successfully and I’ve kept my open Nat type. I found 80 down and 90 up was sweet soft, giving a+ rating with zero up or down added lat on bufferbloat test (Fritzbox was a B). On my old isp I had to go down to 60 percent to get rid of bufferbloat. When boosting ps5 device.should I set it to level 2 or level 5?

Hi So it arrived on time. So didn’t have to do pppoe. I decided not to use R3 for at least a week just so I could have a baseline of my ISP without and with R3. So tomorrow night - Saturday - I will doing the R3 to fritzbox just to ensure I do the most performant way. Plug R3 into a lan port on Fritz > go to Fritz give it static ip > select expose host > enjoy gaming. Is that the right flow? I hope you and your team have a great weekend.

Thanks for clearing it up for me. Static IP is part of the package, but thanks for clarifying what you mean about wan. My service is going live in 4 days time and router is coming in 4 days, so I may try to plug r3 in if it doesn’t arrive when I go live. As a temp solution, if it works it works if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Hopefully it will be less than 24 hours just in case. I am not sure if you recall, but I did struggle with whole r3 in DMZ, just about manage to do it, haha. I’m a technical noob, so thankful for all your support. I am getting a Fritzbox from my isp. I understand you have to do an ‘expose host’ for the R3 to use it to do pppoe. Are you aware if setting this up is hard or straightforward?