Advice Appreciated - XR500, Sky Ultrafast (G.Fast)

[ewilliams8]

Hi,

I've had the XR500 for almost a year now, it's good but I've not been using it to it's full potential.

My ISP is Sky and up until now my network setup has been as follows:

G.Fast connection (FTTC) ----> Sky modem router (SR204) ----> XR500 ----> PC (previously PS4)  (all ethernet)
G.Fast connection (FTTC) ----> Sky modem router (SR204) ---->TP Link Deco wifi mesh ----> all other devices in household

My throughput is good - normally 100+Mbps down ~30Mbps up. My gaming experience and ping has been okay but I'm greedy / always looking at ways to improve my setup.

One thing that always been poor in this setup is ping under load and general ping spikes. One suggestion is the Sky modem router prioritises traffic to Sky Q boxes, and with no QoS or Bridge Mode on the SR204, it's always bugged me.

I found Draytek do a G.Fast compatible modem (Draytek Vigor 166) which should allow me to bridge the DSL to LAN and then I can use the XR500 to it's full potential.

My proposed setup is as follows:
G.Fast connection (FTTC) ----> Draytek Vigor 166 ----> XR500 ----> PC (all ethernet)
                                                                                                            ----> Deco (AP mode)

 

I bought the Draytek, thinking it would be step in the right direction, and setup last night minus the Deco side of the network. With the Deco out of the equation I did some Connection benchmarks and the results were considerably worse. As you can see in the attached image, last night my Ping Under Load is all C and D ratings, but since reverting back to the original Sky setup this morning, it all A ratings.

 

 

 

 

I am by no means fully clued up on Networking and I'm learning as I go, but I thought I was making my network less complicated by replacing the SR204 with the Draytek. Can anyone offer any advice on anything I've missed or anything I'm doing wrong? Or is the Draytek modem not worth it?

Thanks in advance.

[Netduma Liam]

Welcome to the forum!

Did you re-configure QoS after switching out the modem's? I would suggest doing this as there was less traffic going through the XR so your Congestion Control would need to change.

I would suggest connecting everything how you would ideally like it setup permanently, then run the Auto-setup on QoS and see where that lands you. We can then make tweaks and optimisations from there.

 

[ewilliams8]

Thanks Liam.

I didn't consider that as at the time of testing the only thing on the entire network was the PC over ethernet. I did change the CC from 75%, to 100%, to 50%, etc. for each of the tests in the early hours, but the results didn't seem to differ.

I'll be trying again this evening, so will give the Auto-setup a go. I'll continue to schedule a benchmark every hour, so I've got some comparable results.

 

[Netduma Liam]

53 minutes ago, ewilliams8 said:

Thanks Liam.

I didn't consider that as at the time of testing the only thing on the entire network was the PC over ethernet. I did change the CC from 75%, to 100%, to 50%, etc. for each of the tests in the early hours, but the results didn't seem to differ.

I'll be trying again this evening, so will give the Auto-setup a go. I'll continue to schedule a benchmark every hour, so I've got some comparable results.

 

OK that sounds great, thanks. Make sure CC is set to 'Always' throughout testing. I'd suggest going in 5% increments and testing after each increment to see what yields the best results.

[ewilliams8]

Sorry to ask a stupid question - just looking at the router login page - where is auto setup for QoS?

[Netduma Liam]

Ah - my apologies. It's not currently available on the DumaOS 3.0 beta for the XR500. I'd suggest just starting at 70% and increment up/down by 5% and see what yields the best results.

[ewilliams8]

I've setup as I intended to use it and I'm back to C and D ratings for ping under load. All day on the "old" setup I was getting A ratings.

Changing the Congestion Control by 5% either way doesn't make much difference, each graph seems to follow the same trend.

70%

 

75%

 

80%

[Netduma Liam]

It looks as though you'd actually need to go lower than 70% in order to bring your Ping Under Load down. Were you testing this with Congestion Control set to 'Always'?

[ewilliams8]

Hi Liam,

Yep, set to Always.

I've just done tests with CC at 65, 60, 55 and 50% - D, D, D and C ratings respectively. Again, the graphs follow a similar trend to those above.

Do you have any other suggestions?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

[Netduma Fraser]

We've actually reproduced a bug where Ping Under Load does not respond to QoS changes as it should so don't worry about the results you're seeing there, it is very unlikely to be that bad when you're using QoS so I'd stick with 70/70 for the moment and see how gaming feels

[ewilliams8]

Thanks for confirming Fraser.

Which leads me onto another / my original question really...

Why, when the XR500 is the primary router in my network, is the result worse on the benchmark?

When it’s a secondary router, i.e on the Sky Routers LAN, the benchmark results come out as “A”.

Is it a case that none of the benchmark results can be trusted?

Or is it the Draytek modem’s crap and worse than the free Sky SR204?

 

[Netduma Fraser]

There is no networking reason I can think of there and without the results showing as they should it's hard to know whether there is a legitimate issue there or not. I wouldn't trust the results there for the moment. Before Benchmark we used to recommend following this guide while saturating your network with downloads/streams etc and checking what percentages work best to give the lowest results: http://support.netduma.com/en/support/solutions/articles/16000074717-how-to-test-your-internet-ping