QoS setup advice for bufferbloat, please
I made a similar thread over a year ago, but could reply/continue, so making another, sorry!
I'm into tech and not a complete idiot with this stuff, but routers and broadband is very complex and I'm struggling to know what to do...
I've struggled for years with trying to get stable and low latency for my gaming (Battlefield addict!) and avoiding interference from the wife watching Netflix.
I tried several routers over the years and a couple ago I had a Draytek 2860Vac which I managed to configure with up/down limits such that bufferbloat was all but eliminated, but I was still suffering latency spikes when the wife watches Netflix or something.
I then got a TP-Link Archer VR2800. Out of desperation just to try something new and found all my bufferbloat and load problems gone! Just applying its QoS and manual up/down limits made my connection a dream.
(Details: I have a line with excellent theoretical max of 90 down and 20 up. My tariff is 80/20. My actual max is about 70/18. I set QoS bandwidth limits of 64 and 14).
Unfortunately, the WiFi of the Archer kept dropping and stalling my Samsung s20. Trying other routers fixed the WiFi problem and no fiddling with the Archer would fix it, so it had to go, but I was confident that another 'decent modern' router should be able to do the same, yes? Hmm.
I got a pair of Asus ZenWifi XT8. The WiFi in AIMesh is fantastic and I set the QoS to adaptive with manual up/down limits just like the Archer...
...but I see significantly more latency variation even so!
This is my ThinkBroadBand monitoring with the Asus ZenWiFi. For those that don't know TBB, what you are seeing is their FireBrick server pinging me and measuring the ping. Each horizontal pixel is average over 100 seconds, so not just a blip.
It shows a couple of periods with downloads running at about 10MB/s. You can see large load causes packet loss (and there's even packet loss randomly) but there's latency variation (the yellow fuzz) at all times. Even the minimum ping increases during load.
This is from my time with the Tp-Link Archer
Which is almost utterly flat - no latency variation - no packet loss - and even the evening period watching HD Netflix shows hardly any latency effect and definitely no packet loss or rise in minimum ping.
With the Archer, I would get A+ bufferbloat rating from DSL Reports. Currently, with the Asus ZenWiFi I get a B because the upload spikes to 150ish and the down is 30ish.
So, my plea for advice is regarding what I might try to do to the settings in my Asus ZenWifi to match what the Archer was doing, re. Bufferbloat and QoS.
I know it's possible, now I've seen what the Archer can do - but surely the ZenWifi, if configured well, can do the same?
Does anyone here have a ZenWifi (or similar Asus router) and are getting good QoS results?
Can anyone advise me?
Thanks lots for reading this far and thanks even more if you can help! ;^)
Note: Of course, the Draytek and the Tp-Link were both modem/routers and the ZenWifi is a router. I'm using a Netgear DM200 in modem only mode with it. I'm hoping, in modem-only mode it can't be a problem?... Can it?...
