Observation on the XR500 V2.3.2.120

[Bat 'n' Ball]

Hi peeps,

I’ve finally got my hands on a PS5 and (maybe) a significant observation I’ve made, as far as lag-busting DumaOS is concerned, is that full WAN throughput is granted to game downloads and updates, regardless of games currently being played. Let me explain…

I have a solid VDSL2 connection of 60Mbps down 15Mbps up and a base ping of around 9ms. It’s not the fastest connection in the world by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s been constant and rock solid for over 20 years.

Previously on the PS4, I could download a game (or an update to a game) at full 60Mbps throughput. However, when I launched a game, that download speed would quite aggressively be capped at maybe 10Mbps. I assume this was PS4’s own QoS working (or possibly a hardware limitation), but frankly pings during gaming sessions while background downloads were in progress, were great on PS4.

Currently on the PS5, background downloads do not seem to have this throttling. My full 60Mbps throughput continues uncapped while playing games, and pings can often shoot up to around 80-120ms because of buffer bloat.

If you have a super-duper high speed connection then that’s great, because any degradation to pings will be short lived, but for people on slower connections when games might take many hours to download, this might be an issue.

Not sure how DumaOS could manage this with both gaming traffic and downloads going through the same LAN IP but though I’d mention it anyway.

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[Edit]: Good luck England!

[Netduma Fraser]

That's interesting and I'm assuming your Traffic Prioritization settings are standard and you haven't added a manual rule to that?

[Bat 'n' Ball]

Hi Fraser 👋

Sorry for the slow reply…

I have added my PS5 to Traffic Prioritization as a ‘Games Console’ and the Traffic Type is ‘Normal (default)’, so nothing particularly out of the ordinary there. I had exactly the same settings with the PS4.

But, I think this is console-side, not DumaOS-side. The PS4 exhibited aggressive capping to background game or patch downloads while actually playing a game. However, on the PS5, full throughput is allowed while playing a game.

PS4 example while observing Network Monitor:

• Just downloading a game or patch - full 60Mbps download throughput
• Load a game and start playing it - drops to about 20Mbps download throughput
• Stop playing game - back to full 60Mbps download throughput

PS5 example while observing Network Monitor:

• Just downloading a game or patch - full 60Mbps download throughput
• Load a game and start playing it - full 60Mbps download throughput
• Stop playing game - full 60Mbps download throughput

Hence, while playing online on the PS5 while a background download is in progress, I occasionally suffered lag spikes.

It doesn’t really bother me as I just pause the download or wait for the download to complete but some folks might be wondering why they are sometimes experiencing lag spikes on the PS5…. If so, this may be one cause of it?

[Netduma Fraser]

Are you using Congestion Control at the same time? CC should throttle the download and TP should expedite the game packets, thereby allowing you to do both simultaneously 

[Bat 'n' Ball]

• Congestion Control = On
• Auto Enable = On
• Sliders both set to 70%
• (PS5) DumaOS Classified Games packet red dots inactive when just downloading a game or patch (full throughput noted on Network Monitor)
• (PS5) DumaOS Classified Games packet red dots activate when playing a game, but no throttling of the background downloads takes place (still full throughput)

Not sure what test rigs you have in place at Duma HQ but if you have a PS5, try the above... or anyone else reading this thread who has some time on their hands?

[Netduma Fraser]

Yeah I think we can try to test this. Is IPv6 active for the PS5?

[Bat 'n' Ball]

Yes, IPv6 is enabled on the XR500 (Pass Through) and confirmed as working.

... and also on the PS5:

[Netduma Fraser]

Could you disable IPv6 and see whether the QoS seems to work better?

[Newfie]

On the PS5 do you notice an increase on the upload on the monitor when it’s downloading at full rate?

[Bat 'n' Ball]

1 hour ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Could you disable IPv6 and see whether the QoS seems to work better?

Just disabled IPv6 (and confirmed it as being disabled via https://ipv6-test.com/), started a 35GB download on the PS5 and noted the following:

• DumaOS Classified Games packet red dots inactive when just downloading the game (full throughput)
• DumaOS Classified Games packet red dots activate when playing a game, but no throttling of the background download takes place (still full throughput)

Absolutely no change here when using IPv4 vs IPv6.

I think other people (i.e., yourselves) need to test this to confirm.

[Netduma Fraser]

53 minutes ago, Bat 'n' Ball said:

Just disabled IPv6 (and confirmed it as being disabled via https://ipv6-test.com/), started a 35GB download on the PS5 and noted the following:

• DumaOS Classified Games packet red dots inactive when just downloading a game or patch (full throughput)
• DumaOS Classified Games packet red dots activate when playing a game, but no throttling of the background downloads takes place (still full throughput)

Absolutely no change here when using IPv4 vs IPv6.

I think other people (i.e., yourselves) need to test this to confirm.

I'll get the team to test this next week

[Bat 'n' Ball]

2 hours ago, Newfie said:

On the PS5 do you notice an increase on the upload on the monitor when it’s downloading at full rate?

I'm not sure what you mean?

[Newfie]

When you download on the PS4 the upload shows activity, on my line at a max 55 it’s around 2.5mbps so that grabs a chunk of your upload, if it’s the same as the PS5 and that’s going flat out it may be a adding to your issues. I just wondered if it’s the same on the PS5 

[Bat 'n' Ball]

16 hours ago, Newfie said:

When you download on the PS4 the upload shows activity, on my line at a max 55 it’s around 2.5mbps so that grabs a chunk of your upload, if it’s the same as the PS5 and that’s going flat out it may be a adding to your issues. I just wondered if it’s the same on the PS5 

While downloading on the PS5, upload is about 1Mbps. That looks fairly normal to me.

[Newfie]

8 hours ago, Bat 'n' Ball said:

While downloading on the PS5, upload is about 1Mbps. That looks fairly normal to me.

Cheers, On the PS4 it’s a tad more for me, must be the difference in download limits.

[Bat 'n' Ball]

On 7/17/2021 at 4:24 PM, Netduma Fraser said:

I'll get the team to test this next week

Did they look into this? What were their findings?

[Netduma Fraser]

4 hours ago, Bat 'n' Ball said:

Did they look into this? What were their findings?

I haven't heard anything, I've chased them and will get back to you

[Mastersgt21]

Glad ive seen this, ive experienced the same thing and also noticed when a game is downloading or updating the chat goes a bit weird and sounds like a robot so if i pause or stop the download everything goes back to normal. 

[Bat 'n' Ball]

25 minutes ago, Mastersgt21 said:

Glad ive seen this, ive experienced the same thing and also noticed when a game is downloading or updating the chat goes a bit weird and sounds like a robot so if i pause or stop the download everything goes back to normal. 

Hi @Mastersgt21 👋

 Yes, that sounds like a throughput issue to me. VoIP dynamically changes (as does some streaming video) to make use of what available bandwidth there is.

Glad it's not just me that has noticed this 👍

[Mastersgt21]

17 hours ago, Bat 'n' Ball said:

Hi @Mastersgt21 👋

 Yes, that sounds like a throughput issue to me. VoIP dynamically changes (as does some streaming video) to make use of what available bandwidth there is.

Glad it's not just me that has noticed this 👍

Hi Bat n Ball, ye ive noticed this since having the ps5 ive tried changing the setting myself but dont get any joy, hopefully it can be worked out at some point 

[Bat 'n' Ball]

Hi peeps 👋

Just a heads-up - this issue is still present on the shiny new V2.3.2.134 firmware.

As I understand it from the patch notes, this firmware update only seems to address Netgear-side things, but just thought I'd use the opportunity to bring this to your attention again as it's nearly ten months since I spotted this problem.

Below is a live screenshot of two side-by-side Chrome tabs. The one on the left shows the QoS page at the same time as the one on the right, which shows the Network Monitor page.

As you can see, the 'Packet LED's' have lit up on the left-hand QoS page, but my full throughput is still granted to my PS5 download on the right-hand Network Monitor page.

My Network Speeds are 15 up / 60 down and my QoS Congestion Control sliders are both set to 75%. In theory, this should cap my download speeds to 45 Mbps and upload to 11 Mbps when playing a game. But, as you can see, my full download speed is allowed to continue. As a consequence, I experienced some pretty bad lag issues in a game of CoD.

• If I download something on my PC while playing a game on my PS5, my PC download speeds are capped properly by the QoS feature
• If I download something on my PS5 while playing a game on my PS5, no network speed capping takes place

The issue therefore only seems to exist when a game is being played on the very same device a download is also taking place.  

To be honest, this is not really a big problem for me. I either just pause the download or let it finish. But, it's possible some folk out there might be experiencing lag in their games because of this particular problem, and therefore be wondering why a lag-busting router doesn't seem to be busting lag!

 

 

Below is a 2 x magnification of the Network Monitor speed graph, for clarity!

[Netduma Fraser]

Thanks for the reminder, if you use manual ports for Traffic Prioritization do you see the same behavior?

[Bat 'n' Ball]

1 hour ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Thanks for the reminder, if you use manual ports for Traffic Prioritization do you see the same behavior?

For Traffic Prioritization, I just quickly set up:

• Source Port (80 - 8080)
• Destination Port (80 - 8080)
• TCP & UDP

I believe that covers all required PlayStation ports for online play (?), but no capping of throughput, despite the 'Packet LED's' lighting up .

I also tried applying a checkmark to 'Apply to WAN' on the Choose Traffic Type dialogue box to see if that helped but that didn't do anything (I'm not altogether sure what that does).

I also tried deleting my manually-added PS5 and just had 'DumaOS Classified Games' handle things. No change.

One last thing I tried was to change the Auto-Enable radio button to Always, but that didn't help.

[Bat 'n' Ball]

P.S.
As explained in a previous post, this wasn't an issue on my PS4 slim because I recall it had its own internal QoS. I very clearly recall testing this a few times.

I watched the Network Monitor page and observed full throughput with a download to the PS4. I then started to play a game on the same console. The throughput dramatically dropped by more than half even though I had QoS on my XR500 turned off. I'm assuming this was PlayStation 4's own internal QoS kicking in.

Maybe PS5's own QoS will come in a future update so it doesn't interfere with online gameplay when a game is being downloaded in the background. But, in the meantime, it would be nice to have my router deal with it 😀

[Netduma Fraser]

Port 80 & 443 is for normal web traffic so that would prioritize the download and supersede the Congestion Control setting, best to use the ports specifically for the game and disable the Console and Classified Games rule to see if it works.