Returning to R3 — Advice needed

[Redflame]

 

Hello,

I ran an R3 from late 2025 to May 2026 on a 900/120 Openreach UK PPPoE line and got excellent results (A+ bufferbloat, only +0-2 ms added latency). Before that I was on a C grade with constant lag.

A disabled family member who had two small strokes moved downstairs into a hospital bed for safety. Previous renovations that included knocking down walls and adding ceiling beams etc, caused WiFi coverage became poor on the far side of the house. The R3 was the only router that could reach part of the room with a weak but workable signal. We tried a TP-Link WiFi extender, but it didn’t work well with their streaming setup. So we move towards eero mesh.

Because I didn’t have safe desk space to run the full ISP router → R3 → Eero chain, I replaced both the ISP router and the R3 with a full Eero mesh (Eero gateway + Eero 6 nodes). This solved the coverage problem, but has re-introduced noticeable bufferbloat and latency spikes during gaming, even with eero’s SQM enabled.

My family member is getting their own extension with dedicated FTTP line soon, so this setup is temporary.

I’m planning to go back to the R3 for its much better latency performance. Since I no longer have an ISP router, I need a replacement PPPoE router to sit in front of the R3 without bottlenecking it.

Any recommendations or advice?

(previous router was fritzbox).

Thanks  

 

[Netduma Fraser]

We don't have any specific recommendations for a router to use in this setup but any should work just fine in that scenario!

[Redflame]

Thanks. I’ve manage to get back onto my R3. My mother still had Fritzbox in storage so it’s my edge device now.

For testing CC - is it best to go onto waveform bufferbloat test move down from 95 and down 10 percent and then up by 5 percent? My ping optimiser is telling me my ping 99-100ms is stable even though my London ping is usually 8-12, this sounds like it may be picking up wrong info? If I do test ping option instead of optimise it does show 8-9ms.