Buffer Bloat

[Denizen]

Do you suffer from BufferBloat? (Jeeeze that sounds personal doesn't it?)

Well what is that? It is the inefficient piling up of packets during high game activity that tends to bottleneck at your router. If you have some graphical readout of your internet use and it appears that you are not using much of your bandwidth but nevertheless during intense game activity you lag way out so when you click an item nothing happens and you see your spells casting several seconds after you have clicked a spell gem --- these are signs of BufferBloat. Here is an easy to read article on the topic:

http://www.tnhh.net/posts/bufferbloat-i ... terms.html


So what to do about this? It really depends on the sophistication of your router. Best if it is a DD-WRT router but others will work too. Basically you must find your QoS setting and set your bandwidth at about 90% of your maximum bandwidth. This makes your router the bottleneck for internet traffic --- which is a good thing since routers are designed to handle that traffic. Now that your bandwidth has been narrowed your router will hopefully be able to be set up to queue packets efficiently when speeds exceed your settings.

You can test all this now because speed tests and users are finding BufferBloat and not band width per se is what can cause serious deterioration of quality of internet access. This online test, for example, now gives you a direct grade on BufferBloat:

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest

[Denizen]

I had four 10 mbps WAN lines from my isp giving me around 38 mbps aggregated speed (with a PEPLINK aggregating router). I've switched now to a single 10 mbps line through a single Netgear 6300v2 router with LEDE-Project firmware and Wow, so much better now. The router cost $33 through ebay and the firmware is free.

The problems with the game freezing up or clickies not working when the in fights (that's when you need a crisp connection) is gone. http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest always gives me an A or an A+ on bufferbloat. My lag in game as dropped by only 10-15 but that was not my problem, it was pure bufferbloat.

Generally boxing 4 groups takes only about 1 mbps of bandwidth or less...the problem is not band width, it is congestion caused by very rapid inbound and outbound traffic.

The router applies an advanced algorithm (luci-app-sqm) which has been under development for at leat 5 years. I'd guess all gaming routers will have this capability within less than 3 years. The reason it works is you make the link with the bufferbloat control the slowest in the line to your computer...if you get 9700 kbps then you narrow this to 9600 or so and instead of memory buffers up the line taking up slack, your router filters, packages, and sends back messages that 9600 is the most your line can take.

Anyway if you take the buffebloat test and get a D or F you need to try this, it makes a world of difference.