Best settings for low bandwidth connection

[ecklund]

My connection:  ADSL 6mbit down, 768kbit up... (yeah I know)

I have 2 DSL modems/connections, unbonded, no dual-wan setups or anything like that.  

192.168.1.1 = my "main" dsl connection, serves DHCP

192.168.1.2 = my "Gaming" connection.  No DHCP

Gaming devices are set with static IPs and told to use .2 as their gateway.

For gaming, I need all of the upstream bandwidth I can get.  I feel like the router / dumaOS may be limiting me as I never seem to see anything close to my max upstream on speed tests.

What would be the best settings for Qos / Bufferbloat?

Thanks,

DE

[Netduma Admin]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

That's some limited bandwidth you go there! But our QoS is the best in the world to get the most out of your connection.

It should be quite straightforward:

1. Anti-Bufferbloat: Set to 85% and the mode 'High Priority Traffic Detected'. This means when you game you'll have a little less bandwidth on your network overall, but nothing else on your network will be able to use all your bandwidth, which prevents congestion
2. Bandwidth Allocation: allocate all your download and upload bandwidth to your gaming device(s). The way it works is that when it needs the bandwidth, it takes it. When it doesn't, other devices can automatically have it

There's a more detailed guide here: http://support.netduma.com/en/support/solutions/articles/16000077073-dumaos-optimal-settings-guide-qos

[ecklund]

12 hours ago, Netduma Admin said:

Hi and welcome to the forum.

That's some limited bandwidth you go there! But our QoS is the best in the world to get the most out of your connection.

It should be quite straightforward:

1. Anti-Bufferbloat: Set to 85% and the mode 'High Priority Traffic Detected'. This means when you game you'll have a little less bandwidth on your network overall, but nothing else on your network will be able to use all your bandwidth, which prevents congestion
2. Bandwidth Allocation: allocate all your download and upload bandwidth to your gaming device(s). The way it works is that when it needs the bandwidth, it takes it. When it doesn't, other devices can automatically have it

There's a more detailed guide here: http://support.netduma.com/en/support/solutions/articles/16000077073-dumaos-optimal-settings-guide-qos

Thanks --

So here's where I'm confused:  Do the sliders determine how much bandwidth is available to priority traffic (gaming), or do they determine how much is available to everything else (bulk)?  For your recommendation, is the breakdown 85% gaming and 15% bulk, or the other way around?  The linked guide would seem to indicate that the setting you're recommending would allow up to 85% of my upstream bandwidth to be used by non-gaming traffic...

 

Or am I missing something?   This connection is used almost exclusively for gaming (as I have another connection for normal life).  

[azza10]

I also have fairly low bandwidth available, around 10-16Mbit down and around 650Kbit up. Up being the main limitation.

I haven't found anything that thoroughly explains how the QoS works in such a low bandwidth scenario.

I can say, the sliders determines how much is available to the bulk traffic afaik. Any traffic that is covered under a traffic prioritization rule is not supposed to be throttled (to my understanding) and therefore can use the full bandwidth available. This is based on what the advertisement of the router touts.

In my experience, the router DOES seem to throttle high priority traffic if you do not allocate enough bandwidth to the gaming device, even if it doesn't show as dropping packets in the QoS menu. This means in extreme low bandwidth cases, say you have 2 computers gaming and both need 400Kbit each on your 750Kbit connection, the router will throttle (drop packets) on both devices.

It may be a case of me not having 100% of the games traffic prioritized, but that is another story. The router really needs a better system for working out what ports games are using. Other than that, this would be because the bandwidth being asked for by both devices exceeds 50% of the total bandwidth and as you cannot allow more than 50% to 2 devices this poses a problem.

One suggestion to this problem would be to allow grouping of devices into QoS 'classes" where every device in the class is allowed to use up to the amount of bandwidth allocated to that class. I can see why this isn't the perfect solution as the user can potentially nullify QoS by allocating more than 100%. This could be partially mitigated by the router doing a simple calculation and telling the user when they have assigned more than 100% of bandwidth and explaining why they might not want to do this and why they might. But read on and I'll explain why I think this could be beneficial. For example, you have 4 computers, 2 general use and 2 gaming.

In your gaming class you have the 2 gaming PC's with 70% allocated to that class.
While typical usage might only be 40% for one gaming pc, you may get spikes to 70% for example.

This means one gaming pc can use up to 70% in its class without hogging all the bandwidth from the general use devices. But then say you want to play on your other computer. Now currently with how QoS works, you would only have 30% bandwidth left to allocate between your other gaming PC and your 2 other devices. Definitely not enough to play your game on and leaves nothing for the other devices.

With the class system, I would propose both gaming devices have 70% bandwidth available to them at all times, which I understand is 140% of available bandwidth and would cause latency issues when both devices need 70% each, but I would argue it is better in games to receive packets late than to experience packet drop. This still leaves the 2 other devices out of luck when both gaming pc's want all the bandwidth, however there is still 30% allocated for them for the times when the gaming pc's are using less than 100%.

I have noticed on my home connection, when gaming other devices can sometimes experience delays and connection problems as there is commonly less than 1% available for each device after allocating 50% to the 2 gaming pc's. I understand when you run out of bandwidth it it simply not possible for QoS to fix it, but currently I feel like it can make it worse at times.

Overall though the router has been better than the previous by far, and does quite a good job. As said, you can't overcome a bandwidth limitation with QoS.

As an aussie I can only hope the NBN network rolls out soon with higher bandwidth and it is as good as promised.

[Netduma Jack]

4 hours ago, azza10 said:

Overall though the router has been better than the previous by far, and does quite a good job. As said, you can't overcome a bandwidth limitation with QoS.
 

Interesting idea, though I don't think it's physically possible, and it's actually not needed in the way you believe. With Share Excess enabled, Bandwidth Allocation already accounts for bandwidth 'spikes' or devices requiring more than the threshold you set. If you had all devices in your home set to 15%, for example, and none were using any bandwidth apart from your PC, your PC would take 100% of the share. It's intuitive enough to work out the calculations you've already suggested, up until you reach your bandwidth limit. (That being said, we're going to keep improving QoS - don't treat it like a finished item!)

 

11 hours ago, ecklund said:

So here's where I'm confused:  Do the sliders determine how much bandwidth is available to priority traffic (gaming), or do they determine how much is available to everything else (bulk)?  For your recommendation, is the breakdown 85% gaming and 15% bulk, or the other way around?  The linked guide would seem to indicate that the setting you're recommending would allow up to 85% of my upstream bandwidth to be used by non-gaming traffic...

Or am I missing something?   This connection is used almost exclusively for gaming (as I have another connection for normal life).  

With Anti-Bufferbloat, if you set it to 85%, the other 15% would be given to high priority Gaming traffic. This is because games use very little bandwidth (<0.5mbps). It's a complex feature in the back-end though, it does a lot more than it says on the tin to optimise gaming. 85% or 70% are good numbers to set it to.

[ecklund]

yeah.... 15% of .6mbit isn't .5 however...

[Netduma Fraser]

19 hours ago, ecklund said:

yeah.... 15% of .6mbit isn't .5 however...

You're right, 85% of .6 is roughly .5 which is the expected behaviour and what your devices speed results would be if you were to do them.  

[ecklund]

On 3/23/2019 at 7:57 AM, Netduma Fraser said:

With Anti-Bufferbloat, if you set it to 85%, the other 15% would be given to high priority Gaming traffic. This is because games use very little bandwidth (<0.5mbps). It's a complex feature in the back-end though, it does a lot more than it says on the tin to optimise gaming. 85% or 70% are good numbers to set it to.

So, which one is it?  (which was my original question.)

 

Thanks,

[Netduma Fraser]

Not sure I understand what you mean. Can you clarify?

Traffic Prioritization supercedes QoS, putting gaming packets ahead of everything else. 

[azza10]

Jack - having a bit of trouble getting quoting working on my phone.

If I understand you right regarding bandwidth allocation and shared excess, we're talking about different scenarios.

In your scenario, your gaming devices might need 40% but are only allocated 15%. Nothing else is using bandwidth so their share is given to the gaming devices.

All is well there.

In my example I'm talking about 2 gaming device's trying to use, say, 70% of the connection each.

Hold up, I know, this sounds silly and you're probably trying to come up with a way to explain that your router can't make bandwidth out of thin air - but bear with me.

So, the router QoS then throttles both gaming devices back to 50% as that's the maximum can be given to both devices.

Now I know this is likely a gross oversimplification of the QoS system, but my understanding is that the QoS systems main way of throttling services and devices is by dropping packets.

So when your connection is being saturated by 2 gaming device's, you have a dilemma of which to prioritise - in other words, which to drop packets from. In my experience playing BF4 with my partner both running discord VoIP I often experience packet loss icons in game. Often when other devices are trying to do things, but also when we are both home alone.

BF4 game data is manually prioritised for both devices. Port 3659, pulled from wireshark.

Turning upload bandwidth to 50% on both gaming device's minimises this behavior, but it still sometimes happens.

I would say this could just be an issue with the connection upstream but pingplotter tests don't indicate any issue under idle. Old routing gear didn't exhibit these symptoms either, even when the network was saturated. Ping would be high, but no packet drop icons + rubber banding I get with the XR500.

My concept is that by allowing >50% bandwidth to more than one device it would allow more than one gamer a better experience on poor connections as QoS isnt dropping packets.

I know it doesn't really solve any problem and the experience will still be poor, it's just a trade off. And it carries a ton of other pitfalls to go with it.

However if this is in fact what's happening I think it would be good to document as you probably have a lot more people on very poor quality connections who are just tech savvy enough to want to buy the router but not enough to realize a router simply cannot overcome a shortage of bandwidth.

Just the clarify, I'm not looking for this to be solved. If this is indeed what is going on, the solution is simple. Get better internet. I'm waiting out the NBN network here in aussieland at the moment and I think it will solve a lot of issues with this type of problem.

Reading some old threads here though I see a lot of people describing symtoms that sound a lot what I've experienced and I just wonder if more thorough documentation on how certain features specifically work in conjunction with the rest of the router then a lot of the speculation like what I'm posting now could be avoided.

[Netduma Jack]

Hi Azza - let me clarify this for you! So first off, QoS doesn't drop packets to throttle devices - rather, it limits the amount of bandwidth a device can take. Limiting using QoS in this way actually reduces the amount of packets -sent- as well, so there aren't an excess of packets. No packet loss will occur. Our Anti-Bufferbloat solution is pretty unique, since we built it from the ground up to prevent the packet loss and spikes throttling would usually cause.

Secondly, you're assuming it's possible for gaming to saturate your network. It isn't - games use <0.5mbps bandwidth (usually a lot less). Giving them 50% of your home network bandwidth, even with a low speed connection, is usually overkill.

It's far more likely that the packet loss symbols you're seeing are caused by other factors, or it just isn't happening. Plenty of ping spikes / packet loss indicators in games are inaccurate, especially when secondary routers and QoS get involved. You're far better off using Pingplotter to test for packet loss - if it isn't showing on software like that, it most certainly isn't happening in-game unless the game servers are the cause.

[ecklund]

OK.  I'm getting frustrated by the support / threadjacking here. 😡

 

Please answer my question; for the third time:    If I set the anti-bufferbloat sliders to 85%,  Does that mean that gaming gets 85% of the bandwidth, or that everything else that isn't gaming gets 85% of the bandwidth?

I'd ask you again to please note that my upstream bandwidth  is 768 kilobit/sec so, yes I think it is possible for a game to saturate my upstream connection.  My goal is to stop every other device from using upstream bandwidth when I'm gaming. 

 I can't believe that nobody from NetDuma can answer this question.  

[TrayDay]

55 minutes ago, ecklund said:

OK.  I'm getting frustrated by the support / threadjacking here. 😡

 

Please answer my question; for the third time:    If I set the anti-bufferbloat sliders to 85%,  Does that mean that gaming gets 85% of the bandwidth, or that everything else that isn't gaming gets 85% of the bandwidth?

I'd ask you again to please note that my upstream bandwidth  is 768 kilobit/sec so, yes I think it is possible for a game to saturate my upstream connection.  My goal is to stop every other device from using upstream bandwidth when I'm gaming. 

 I can't believe that nobody from NetDuma can answer this question.  

3

Since you're using DumaOS, having the "share excess" option ticked will share that 85% bandwidth. What you're looking to accomplish is, unticking "share excess" on the upload. So that the bandwidth is given only to the gaming device.  You can select the gaming device, and pretty much give that 100% bandwidth, as you stated, you want the other devices to have "no bandwidth". You will still have access to the DumaOS interface if you want to connect from another device other than the gaming device. I do want to inform you that it will be extremely slow, but you will still have access to the interface if you need to change the sliders back.  You can still set the 99% upload to the gaming device and leave 1% for other devices, which will also work out fine but if you truly want "no bandwidth" for others and only your gaming, then set the gaming to 100% upload in the "bandwidth allocation".

Showing a photo of what it will look like if you do 100% with share excess "unticked"

 

- Tray

 

[Guest Killhippie]

6 hours ago, ecklund said:

OK.  I'm getting frustrated by the support / threadjacking here. 😡

 

Please answer my question; for the third time:    If I set the anti-bufferbloat sliders to 85%,  Does that mean that gaming gets 85% of the bandwidth, or that everything else that isn't gaming gets 85% of the bandwidth?

I'd ask you again to please note that my upstream bandwidth  is 768 kilobit/sec so, yes I think it is possible for a game to saturate my upstream connection.  My goal is to stop every other device from using upstream bandwidth when I'm gaming. 

 I can't believe that nobody from NetDuma can answer this question.  

If you ran pingplotter that would give a great view of your network, blocking every other device from using upload traffic is really not needed and is very heavy handed approach also unless you live on your own that's going to effect other devices in a negative way. There reaches a point where you just either need a better package from your provider, or a dedicated line for gaming only if that's the best stats you can get.AS I mentioned unless unless you live on your own and don't mind your LAN grinding to a halt upload wise its going to cause issues on the LAN with other peoples kit and devices that need to communicate on that uplink, and gaming traffic is already prioritised so that should not happen anyway as has been explained. Since games take <0.5mbps I would have run pingplotter as Jack mentioned to see if your network does get saturated, rather than trying to just block everything on the upload because you assume it does. The people helping you here know a lot about DumaOS, more than most as they work with it every day, so listening to them and running tests they may ask for would be a much more productive approach and may be better for the network you game on too. Hope it all works out.

[Netduma Fraser]

16 hours ago, ecklund said:

OK.  I'm getting frustrated by the support / threadjacking here. 😡

Please answer my question; for the third time:    If I set the anti-bufferbloat sliders to 85%,  Does that mean that gaming gets 85% of the bandwidth, or that everything else that isn't gaming gets 85% of the bandwidth?

I'd ask you again to please note that my upstream bandwidth  is 768 kilobit/sec so, yes I think it is possible for a game to saturate my upstream connection.  My goal is to stop every other device from using upstream bandwidth when I'm gaming. 

 I can't believe that nobody from NetDuma can answer this question.  

All devices are restricted to that 85%, your console would also show the 85% amount in a speed test. Anti-Bufferbloat ensures that the network does not become congested by leaving headroom. The Traffic Prioritization prioritizes your gaming packets putting them in front of the queue of everything else. Are you certain that your upload is 768 Kilobit and not Kilobyte? There is a very big difference there so want to make sure we're on the same page. If it's Kilobit that's like dialup level speeds, in which case I understand your motive to give everything to the console. You can do this with Bandwidth Allocation as suggested above but it is not needed unless you are actually on Kilobit.

[ecklund]

17 hours ago, Killhippie said:

If you ran pingplotter that would give a great view of your network, blocking every other device from using upload traffic is really not needed and is very heavy handed approach also unless you live on your own that's going to effect other devices in a negative way. There reaches a point where you just either need a better package from your provider, or a dedicated line for gaming only if that's the best stats you can get.AS I mentioned unless unless you live on your own and don't mind your LAN grinding to a halt upload wise its going to cause issues on the LAN with other peoples kit and devices that need to communicate on that uplink, and gaming traffic is already prioritised so that should not happen anyway as has been explained. Since games take <0.5mbps I would have run pingplotter as Jack mentioned to see if your network does get saturated, rather than trying to just block everything on the upload because you assume it does. The people helping you here know a lot about DumaOS, more than most as they work with it every day, so listening to them and running tests they may ask for would be a much more productive approach and may be better for the network you game on too. Hope it all works out.

(I have a dedicated line for gaming... Please see OP,  the rest, I'll consider. I was getting irritated because I asked a very specific question and got a lot of non-answers.)

[ecklund]

7 hours ago, Netduma Fraser said:

All devices are restricted to that 85%, your console would also show the 85% amount in a speed test. Anti-Bufferbloat ensures that the network does not become congested by leaving headroom. The Traffic Prioritization prioritizes your gaming packets putting them in front of the queue of everything else. Are you certain that your upload is 768 Kilobit and not Kilobyte? There is a very big difference there so want to make sure we're on the same page. If it's Kilobit that's like dialup level speeds, in which case I understand your motive to give everything to the console. You can do this with Bandwidth Allocation as suggested above but it is not needed unless you are actually on Kilobit.

Kilobits.. as in 96 kilobytes up... .768 Megabits..   It sucks.  I'm trying to make the best out of a bad situation.. hence the router.  The attached graphic is from a speedtest on my other line.. usually upload speed looks better, probably something else uploading at the time.

[Netduma Fraser]

Okay that's not as bad as I thought actually, kilobits is different to kilobytes so actually although your upload is slow a game shouldn't actually max it out as I wouldn't really expect a game to go above 200kbps. While it would be a good idea to give a bigger percentage to the console for upload you won't need to give it all of it. I'd say 50% should be just fine, combined with Anti-Bufferbloat and Traffic Prioritization you should be good.