XR300 QoS help

[Taylordrift21]

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum and I am also new to the XR300 router. I am having some issues with it though that I hope someone will be able to help me with. The issue I am having is I am gaming online with Xbox, and when my wife watches Netflix I am suffering lag. I have anti-bufferbloat selected on always. My bandwidth allocation is selected on 100 on my Xbox with share excess bandwidth selected. My Xbox is added to the traffic prioritisation. Is there something I have missed or not configured properly? I did think about disabling the share excess function on bandwidth but then that would result in other devices not being able to function correctly. I did try editing my smart tv so that the bandwidth was only set at 2mbps however I felt like it still wasn’t working correctly. Any help would be much appreciated. 

Danny 

[faulko]

lower your bandwidth to 70% on the Buffer sliders.

Start with that.

 

[Taylordrift21]

Hi @faulko I have set them at 70% on both upload and download. Thanks 

[faulko]

http://support.netduma.com/support/solutions/articles/16000077073-dumaos-optimal-settings-guide-qos-step-3-

 

[Taylordrift21]

I have read that article and I have tried doing what it recommends except for the advanced section of adding ports in traffic prioritisation. Thanks anyway, any other suggestions? Thanks 

[faulko]

No sorry.

Other then when you make changes perhaps a reboot just to make sure its all locked in.

[Netduma Alex]

Just out of interest, is your wife using an Amazon Fire TV Stick to watch Netflix?

[Taylordrift21]

Hi Alex, no she is using a smart tv? What are your thoughts on this? Thanks 

[Guest Killhippie]

4 hours ago, faulko said:

No sorry.

Other then when you make changes perhaps a reboot just to make sure its all locked in.

You dont need to reboot when making changes just press apply, rebooting causes more issues than it does good if you do it all the time.

[Netduma Alex]

3 hours ago, Taylordrift21 said:

Hi Alex, no she is using a smart tv? What are your thoughts on this? Thanks 

Ah okay it's just that i've found that a Fire TV Sticks cause all sorts of slowdown sometimes.

What I would suggest is to set Anti-Bufferbloat to always, and then turn down the Download slider by 10% at a time until your gameplay seems stable. You can then turn the sliders back up slowly until it starts to feel worse. Using this method you can find the sweet spot on the slider for your connection.

[Taylordrift21]

Hi Alex, thanks for your reply I will give that a try and see how it works out. Whilst I do try this is there anything else I would need to configure in terms of bandwidth, what should I set that at? Thanks 

[Netduma Alex]

The bandwidth setting (in the anti-bufferbloat side menu) should be set to the speed that you pay for from your ISP.

If you're not sure, you could set it to the maximum speed you've ever got on a speed test on your connection.

You basically want it to represent your connection at it's best.

[Taylordrift21]

Sorry I wasn’t clear with my question. In regards to bandwidth I was meaning for each device, as I have manually changed the bandwidth for download and upload on the smart tv and my Xbox. So my question in relation to that is once I’ve adjusted the sliders on the “anti-bufferbloat” as you suggested what would you recommend I do for the bandwidth on the devices? 

Thanks 

[Netduma Fraser]

For Bandwidth Allocation you can leave that on default as it will share bandwidth between them based on need. It may be a good idea to follow this guide and saturate your connection by doing downloads/streams etc and trying different Anti-Bufferbloat percentages to see what lowers your ping the most/keeps it stable. http://support.netduma.com/en/support/solutions/articles/16000074717-how-to-test-your-internet-ping

[Taylordrift21]

Hi Fraser, sorry been busy at work hence for late reply, I have been playing with it a little, the link you shared was useful however I don't have my ping plotter doing exactly as it is in that guide but it's not far away so I am going to keep adjusting it in small increments to see if I can keep a stable ping without sacrificing too much on my download and upload speeds as I only have 70mbps download and 20mbps upload. I also used the dslreports which at the minute where my anti-bufferbloat sliders are set I have A+ for Quality, Bufferbloat, Overall I assume this is good as well? Thanks 

[Netduma Fraser]

26 minutes ago, Taylordrift21 said:

Hi Fraser, sorry been busy at work hence for late reply, I have been playing with it a little, the link you shared was useful however I don't have my ping plotter doing exactly as it is in that guide but it's not far away so I am going to keep adjusting it in small increments to see if I can keep a stable ping without sacrificing too much on my download and upload speeds as I only have 70mbps download and 20mbps upload. I also used the dslreports which at the minute where my anti-bufferbloat sliders are set I have A+ for Quality, Bufferbloat, Overall I assume this is good as well? Thanks 

I'd recommend PingPlotter over DSLReports but it does sound like you're on the right track to getting what works for you!

[Taylordrift21]

Hey guys, so over the last few days I have been doing some testing in regards to the QoS on my XR300. I have been doing some sort of process of eliminating anything that could be causing the issues I have when gaming online while other users are streaming movies. A few things that I did come across were a few of the ethernet cables were only CAT5  (not sure to be honest if that would make a difference but I replaced them with CAT 5e) and I also unplugged my powerline adapters to make sure there were no interference that way either. 

I have attached some evidence of the tests I performed with PingPlotter. Picture 1 ( This was a test with nothing other than my PC connected which shows you my base ping) 

Picture 2 ( I had 2 smart tv's streaming Netflix, I was also performing speed tests and watching videos on YouTube on the PC) 

Picture 3 ( Settings of my QoS settings on my XR300, as you can see my download is 68mbps and upload is 17mbps, from there you will see where my anti-bufferbloat sliders are) 

So from the guide about PingPlotter and setting up the Anti-Bufferbloat that Fraser posted the second picture of my PingPlotter isn't correct to what it should be according to the guide, where do we go from here? I have tried quite a few times in changing my sliders in my QoS settings to see which is working best and unfortunately as the evidence shows in picture 2 is the best i can get so far, admittedly it was worse than that before with previous settings. I am still trying to think is there anything I have overlooked has anyone anything else i can do? It is  very disappointing for me as the reason for buying this router was that I hoped it would resolve this issue for gaming online when other devices are using the internet as well,  any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank You 

[Netduma Admin]

Thanks for the info. This confirms something is not working to full affect here. Let's go through the list of possible causes:

1. What mode did you have Anti-bufferbloat on? Please set it to Always mode when testing so you can be 100% sure it has enabled
2. Are you certain that all the devices that were using a load of bandwidth were connected to your XR300, rather than your modem? Double check they haven't accidentally connected to your modem
3. The device that was running the PingPlotter - is it wired into your XR300 or connected wirelessly? If it was wireless, could you try a connecting via wire and repeating the test. It's possible that blasting so much bandwidth through WiFi might have affected your ping
4. Have you manually added any rules to Traffic Prioritization? Delete them if so.

I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of this, so let us if any of the changes above fix your problem.

[Taylordrift21]

Hi, Anti-bufferbloat is set to Always, modem is not visible to any devices and the devices that use the bandwidth are wireless. The pingplotter was used on my PC which is hard wired.  As for traffic prioritisation my Xbox was the only added device and for the basic section I selected games console, do you mean delete the Xbox from the traffic prioritisation? Just so you’re aware the Xbox was not in use or on during the pingplotter testing. Thank you 

[Philace866]

sorry to hijack this but I’m also having the exact same trouble with my ping whilst playing modern warfare on PS4 wired connection to xr300, only way I can combat it is by turning Wi-fi off which is no good when the mrs wants to watch Netflix on smart tv

I’ve tried ping plotter as per many instructions on this forum but I have no idea what any of it means! Can someone help me with the attached? Do I have a problem on my line? I dont seem to get this problem with my isp’s router 

bufferbloat set to 70/70 - tried always and only when high traffic

ps4 added to priority and dmz 

thanks in advance 

 

 

[Netduma Alex]

Hmm... Could you try running that test again but ping bbc.co.uk instead?

[Philace866]

I ran it today whilst my friend who works for openreach was at my house, he checked line from home and the cabinet, no problems! I’m starting to lose the motivation to keep trying with this router, I’ve already returned one assuming it was faulty but this one is exactly the same
 

do you have any timescales on the next firmware update for the xr300? 
 

thanks 

[Philace866]

I’ve isolated the problem to when Netflix is streaming on SkyQ, tried disabling Qos and tried anti-bufferbloat on everything from 10-90% with no luck 

would an xr500 solve this? It appears the xr300 can’t cope with Qos 

 

thanks 

[Taylordrift21]

I have got to say the support on here is appalling I don't mean, the time it takes for admin to reply but replying with minimal response to help someone out, you should be giving us a few things at least to try or do. Anyway @Philace866 I will try and help you a little although I am in a similar boat to you which is basically down to the QoS. In regards to your ping plotter evidence I did so happen to notice you had done it wirelessly via your laptop, I would do the tests via an ethernet cable if you can, firstly do it with nothing on you network in terms of using it. See what your base ping is and ping the bbc.co.uk. Before you do that put your QoS sliders at 70% and enable QoS, then try your tests. Probably not worth doing really as I have done the same on my XR300 and I still can't get it to where it should be although I don't get packet loss like you did in your tests but I think that may be because you were doing it via wireless. 

The XR500 runs the same Duma OS as the XR300 as I looked at that option as well, the difference really comes down to the hardware. The XR500 is more powerful in terms of CPU etc and wireless coverage and speeds but the QoS is exactly the same. I would research the XR500 a little bit more in terms of the QoS for it, ie see if you can find any forums with QoS problems on XR500 seen as they are more expensive just to save you forking it out to have the same issue. Sorry I am not much help but I would help if I knew what the problem was. 

[Philace866]

Hi mate, 

Thanks for the reply, I tried it wired to bbc when my friend who works for the phone lines was here yesterday and he said everything is good, I just don’t think the xr300 can cope with qos, I can only get max 40down and 7up here, maybe it hasn’t got enough to play with! 
something must be up with them as the contact us web chat didn’t put up a fight when I told them my last one was broken, they just sent a new one!