Jump to content

XR500 Anti-BufferBloat Wifi vs Hardwired


Recommended Posts

Hello,

As a lot of us are spending a lot more time on our home wireless networks these days I've started to get annoyed by connectivity problems that had me digging into my network setup a bit more. I became aware of the concept of bufferbloat and did a number of tests using Pingplotter. What I've found is that I can easily saturate my connecting triggered very high latency and massive packet loss. None of these problems exist on my wired connections, as I have gigabit up & down that is nearly impossible to saturate.

In playing around with the anti-bufferbloat settings I found that if I restricted things way way down (50mbps) that the wireless connections would behave. Obviously this is not an ideal solution though, as I have a decent amount of hardwired devices throughout the house that take advantage of having much faster speeds. From what I can tell, my other option would be to manually crawl through the bandwidth allocation and set caps based on wired or wireless devices. This isn't really ideal either, as my devices table is huge and I don't want to have to go manually adjust the limit every time a friend brings a new phone over.

It seems like this should be a common use case...are there any other options that I'm missing here?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your issue is probably in the wifi. If you test somewhere in the house, then your wifi speed is not as high as the 1000/1000 set at your router and thus this becomes a bottleneck. For gaming devices etc I would always avoid wifi and simply use wired connections.

 

Like on my XR500, I will achieve full bandwidth on my phone sitting at my desk next to the router but when I walk to the living room it drops significantly.

 

If you really want to use wifi one option is using a additional access point closer to the device you use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Bert said:

Your issue is probably in the wifi. If you test somewhere in the house, then your wifi speed is not as high as the 1000/1000 set at your router and thus this becomes a bottleneck. For gaming devices etc I would always avoid wifi and simply use wired connections.

 

Like on my XR500, I will achieve full bandwidth on my phone sitting at my desk next to the router but when I walk to the living room it drops significantly.

 

If you really want to use wifi one option is using a additional access point closer to the device you use.

Thanks for your reply. I'm aware I won't be getting the kinds of speeds my wired devices have (and indeed, where capable we do have gaming computers wired) but my concern is that when the wireless connection becomes saturated a get a lot of latency and packet loss. What this turns into is dropped video conferencing calls and robo-voice during meetings. If I was going to solve the issue with more hardware I would likely do a combination of APs and a mesh solution. I would prefer not to ditch this router but there's really no need for it if I go that route -- I need to be able to rely on the wireless from the actual router without being right next to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

See below for pingplotter while sitting next to my router, are you telling me this is expected? If I set anti-bufferbloat to 5% the line stays flat. My issue is that this restricts every device on the network to 50mbps.

809914308_ABB70nexttorouter.thumb.PNG.1f326f02d3529dc2b80e819601bb30ab.PNG

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Netduma Fraser said:

That's not normal. What exactly is your physical setup? Are ALL devices connected to the XR?

That's correct -- I have a BGW210 gateway from AT&T connected to the XR and then all my devices are either wired (directly or via switch) or wireless to the XR. Most of my tests have been on the 5ghz band but have confirmed that the issue also exists on 2.4ghz. Not having any issues with wired connections.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So it sounds like there's an unexpected bottleneck on wireless. I imagine the reason that reducing your bandwidth fixes it is because it takes your maximum connection level below that bottleneck. As for why that's happening, i'm not sure, but it could be due to interference from nearby devices, it might be worth using a wifi analyser app to see which channels are free near you and switch the XR500 to those channels.

You could also do a little fiddling with the Bandwidth Allocation. Depending on how many devices you have on your network, it might be plausible to disable Share Excess Bandwidth, set your maximum bandwidth higher than it actually is, and then lowering the speed of wireless devices while leaving wired devices nice and high.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can you elaborate on what else might be causing a bottleneck? I've done a pretty full survey of the house with wifi analyzer, 2.4ghz is pretty crowded here which is another reason I've mostly excluded it from my testing. The 5ghz channel that I'm on is completely clear though. 

Bumping up the max bandwidth to create a higher minimum percentage is an interesting idea. I've mostly stayed away from this as my device list is ~100 and there aren't really any tools to clean this up other than manually removing things one by one. If the list goes over 100 then the default allocation is 0%, which if I understand correctly would block devices if share excess was unchecked. Is that correct?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators

Thank you for providing the screenshots. In Wireless Settings could you disable 'Enable 20/40 MHz Coexistence' please and for the 5GHz channel use a non DFS channel such as 153 please. In Advanced Settings disable HT-160 - I always have issues with this enabled. Apply all that and then reboot. See if you then have a better experience with WiFi.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quick update with only a little testing. I disabled HT160 and switched channels but have not yet disabled 20/40mhz coexistence due to concern over a few devices being able to connect (don't want to cause an insurrection during lockdown). That said, switching off the DFS channel seems to have made a HUGE difference. I'll be continuing to test but my pingplotter on 5ghz didn't drop a single packet in my last attempt vs the solid bars from last time. I'm going to keep investigating and we'll see the next time my company has an all hands video conference. I'll also be checking the 2.4ghz connection a little more, even though I know there is a lot of congestion there. Thanks for the help Fraser and Alex, I'll make sure to update this thread either way.

For posterity, I found this to be an interesting read regarding DFS channels and latency:

https://mac-wifi.com/why-i-dislike-dfs-channels-and-you-might-too/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

Hey all! I just wanted to report back that this does seem to have solved my wireless issues. Videoconferencing now works pretty much flawlessly and doesn't freeze. Interestingly, we also noticed improvements on the 2.4ghz network. My outdoor camera is a bit more reliable and more importantly, since switching off the DFS channel my gf's headset mic stopped going robotic (she is typically on the 2.4ghz and I'm on the 5ghz due to where our desks are). So I guess that raises some questions -- does having the DFS channel enabled cause the router to treat all wireless traffic differently instead of just the 5ghz? If so, should it be that way?

Anyway, many thanks for the help!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Administrators

That is fantastic to hear, thank you for providing an update. Yes selecting DFS can have some ramifications for wireless so shouldn't be any need to use them as should be enough channels to choose from that doesn't result in wireless contention.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...