BT Halo FTTC and Netduma R2 Setup Help

[Jabra]

Hi, I've recently received my Netduma R2 which I have upgraded to 3.0.394, connected to my BT Smarthub and added the R2 to the BT Smarthub DMZ. 

Seem to be getting quite a lot of buffering especially on devices that are on WiFi. Connection benchmarking gives me A+ on both speed and ping but ping under load is returning D.

Is there anything else I need to change on either my Smarthub or R2?

I'm using BT Halo G.Fast FTTC (300Mbps down, 50Mbps up)

Thanks.

[Netduma Liam]

Welcome to the forum!

How have you configured QoS? I'd suggest starting with Congestion Control set to Auto-enable, set the sliders to 70% each and make sure DumaOS classified games is enabled in Traffic Prioritisation.

[Jabra]

24 minutes ago, Netduma Liam said:

Welcome to the forum!

How have you configured QoS? I'd suggest starting with Congestion Control set to Auto-enable, set the sliders to 70% each and make sure DumaOS classified games is enabled in Traffic Prioritisation.

Hi Liam, I’ve set it up at 70% for QoS and classified games is enabled. Do I need to make any changes to DHCP/UPNP etc?

[Netduma Fraser]

Are ALL devices connected to the R2? For WiFi I'd suggest disabling Mirror Mode, then giving 2.4/5GHz different names, applying, then rebooting the router from the interface. Then wait 2 minutes before connecting to 2.4/5GHz manually, see if it is better after that.

[Jabra]

28 minutes ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Are ALL devices connected to the R2? For WiFi I'd suggest disabling Mirror Mode, then giving 2.4/5GHz different names, applying, then rebooting the router from the interface. Then wait 2 minutes before connecting to 2.4/5GHz manually, see if it is better after that.

I’ll give it ago Fraser. Can you confirm whether I need to change DHCP or UPNP on either router? I’ve seen some online recommendations saying to disable those on the BT Smart Hub but I don’t see how that would improve the Ping Under Load…

[Netduma Fraser]

12 minutes ago, Jabra said:

I’ll give it ago Fraser. Can you confirm whether I need to change DHCP or UPNP on either router? I’ve seen some online recommendations saying to disable those on the BT Smart Hub but I don’t see how that would improve the Ping Under Load…

I would not suggest disabling DHCP on either router at all. UPnP you could disable on the BT router but the DMZ passes all the traffic straight through to the R2 anyway so it's not really needed. Would suggest keeping UPnP enabled on the R2. If you provide a completed Benchmark test we can advise more.

[Jabra]

2 hours ago, Netduma Fraser said:

I would not suggest disabling DHCP on either router at all. UPnP you could disable on the BT router but the DMZ passes all the traffic straight through to the R2 anyway so it's not really needed. Would suggest keeping UPnP enabled on the R2. If you provide a completed Benchmark test we can advise more.

Here's a connection test, any advice resolving the ping under load would be appreciated.

[Netduma Fraser]

Okay yeah that upload is pretty high! What QoS settings do you have currently, can you provide a screenshot please?

[Jabra]

1 hour ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Okay yeah that upload is pretty high! What QoS settings do you have currently, can you provide a screenshot please?

I tried 70% for download/upload as per suggestions which didn’t resolve it and then used auto-setup which gave me 96% down and 62% up which also didn’t resolve.

[Netduma Fraser]

Whatever your download percentage was for the test above is fine. For upload start at 95% then do a test, then go down in increments of 10% and do a test etc. See what gives you the best results then if there is more room go 5% either side of that value and see if it improves more.

[Jabra]

3 hours ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Whatever your download percentage was for the test above is fine. For upload start at 95% then do a test, then go down in increments of 10% and do a test etc. See what gives you the best results then if there is more room go 5% either side of that value and see if it improves more.

Cheers Fraser, no idea why but lowering right down and increasing over multiple benchmark tests actually gave me even better than what auto-detect selected.

[Netduma Fraser]

Ahh that is much better! Looks like you could get download/upload ms down a bit more but way better than previously! We are still improving on Auto Setup so it may not always give you the best results.

[Jabra]

11 hours ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Ahh that is much better! Looks like you could get download/upload ms down a bit more but way better than previously! We are still improving on Auto Setup so it may not always give you the best results.

Yeah unfortunately not, any increase no matter how minimal gave me worse results so I reset it back to 75% and while the last few benchmarks I’ve done at that have also came back with poor (D) ping under load results I had the most success there so I’ll stick with that for a while and continue to monitor. 
 

What causes fluctuations during these tests? I don’t quite understand how it can go from A+ to D within a few hours.

[Netduma Fraser]

55 minutes ago, Jabra said:

Yeah unfortunately not, any increase no matter how minimal gave me worse results so I reset it back to 75% and while the last few benchmarks I’ve done at that have also came back with poor (D) ping under load results I had the most success there so I’ll stick with that for a while and continue to monitor. 
 

What causes fluctuations during these tests? I don’t quite understand how it can go from A+ to D within a few hours.

Okay fair enough, they're still decent results so that's good. It's a test directly from the router so it's not influenced by WiFi or other devices etc but it will reflect in the results congestion on the ISP network so during peak times for example it's likely to be worse.