Worth buying a new router for QoS?

[Drystoner]

In my home network there is usually about 6 active devices. The download speed is 40 mbps and upload 5 mbps.

While gaming even with ethernet, I get major ping spikes. On average I usually get 30 to 40 ms depending on the server. But when there is more traffic I get spikes anywhere from 100 ms to 500 ms.

Would buying a third party router that offers QoS be worth it in this scenario?

I'm planning to allocate 4 mpbs down and 0.2 mpbs upload per device. It is limited bandwidth to work with, but that's the fastest offered in this area.

[emoticorpse]

Is that BT Smarthub 1 your Modem or your router or both modem and router?

[Drystoner]

Origineel geplaatst door emoticorpse:

Is that BT Smarthub 1 your Modem or your router or both modem and router?

It's a modem/router all in one.

[Agent]

Getting a Amazon Eero for SQM cake will work very well in your scenario of low bandwidth with many users.

I'd also make sure that your router/modem is plugged into the BT master socket and not an extension. You will lose much bandwidth due to more interference and distance to travel.

[Drystoner]

So I bought the Eero and after hours of set up trying to get my modem to work in bridge mode and realising my ISP doesn't support it I got it working via double NAT. Then configured the DMZ and forwarded UPnP to avoid issues with games.

It works like a charm and now my bufferbloat issues are resolved! Also ran a bufferbloat test and score grade A, with ping spikes now only reaching about 60 ms at most even when upload is loaded.

SQM is literally a life saver for those of us still stuck with low bandwidth DSL. Highly recommended and thanks for sharing it.

[Agent]

Origineel geplaatst door Kim Wexler:

So I bought the Eero and after hours of set up trying to get my modem to work in bridge mode and realising my ISP doesn't support it I got it working via double NAT. Then configured the DMZ and forwarded UPnP to avoid issues with games.

It works like a charm and now my bufferbloat issues are resolved! Also ran a bufferbloat test and score grade A, with ping spikes now only reaching about 60 ms at most even when upload is loaded.

SQM is literally a life saver for those of us still stuck with low bandwidth DSL. Highly recommended and thanks for sharing it.

Glad to hear it resolved your bufferbloat problems.

I myself have an Eero setup for the house and it works great when guests are round.

The days of Netflix bringing the network to a halt are over and I can still get my low ping in game.

[Pocahawtness]

Origineel geplaatst door Kim Wexler:

In my home network there is usually about 6 active devices. The download speed is 40 mbps and upload 5 mbps.

While gaming even with ethernet, I get major ping spikes. On average I usually get 30 to 40 ms depending on the server. But when there is more traffic I get spikes anywhere from 100 ms to 500 ms.

Would buying a third party router that offers QoS be worth it in this scenario?

I'm planning to allocate 4 mpbs down and 0.2 mpbs upload per device. It is limited bandwidth to work with, but that's the fastest offered in this area.

QOS by itself is not actually that useful. What you really need is something called Adaptive QOS. Perhaps the most flexible I know is in the Netgear X1000. This does nothing until it detects you are playing a game. Not actually an easy thing, because games are all different. When it detects a game it gives the game priority but it can also reduce the bandwidth of the connection to reduce buffer bloat / connection lag. You can also set bandwidth to individual devices but that isn't usually necessary.
It's not without problems though. The XR1000 recognises most games but not all, the rest you have to configure manually.
Asus has a similar system in place. It uses Trend Micro to provide details of games so it can detect if you are playing.
At the moment both have some bugs in, but mostly work just fine. Even the Merlin Asus suffers the same problem because the bug is at the Trend end of things.
The netgear adaptive qos is a little more configurable than the asus but I am not sure it makes any difference. One advantage with the netgear is you can manually switch the buffer bloat on without game detection, and set the bandwidth limits, and that should help considerably even if the router doesn't recognise the game you are playing.
The XR1000 also has inbuilt testing that shows you what the scale of bufferbloat you are getting.
Anyway, I have used Adaptive QOS on both and it works very well indeed. It has a dramatic effect on ping on a very busy home network.

[Viking2121]

Sure its already been answered, I had to do just this, I had a Nighthawk R8000 router, amazing router when its not overheating, but its QoS was absolutely terrible, It would max out the CPU in the thing and it would just reboot out of the blue. I tried DDWRT and the Advanced Tomato on it and it just had all kinds of issues. Once day it just rebooted and it like factory reset its self so I unplugged it and threw in the trash, all that port forwarding for my server and QoS settings I was done with it.

I bought a TP-Link AX4400 and QoS is amazing on it, I limit the smart TV's, some of the lower end computers, and it does it only threw internet traffic, like local file transfers I can keep it at full speed which is awesome. the only issue is the 160mhz on the wifi is kinda garbage, it works and when it does its fast, I get over Gigabit real speed with it, but it limits what other devices can see it on the 5ghz band and of course 2.4ghz I can only get about half of my 500mbps internet speed on a good day.

I did play with a cheaper Asus router and the QoS was pretty decent with it as well but of course a little more basic, im not sure what their higher end ones are like.

I absolutely hate netgear crap, they never seems to work right, ton of security issues they never patch out, their support is worse than your local drug dealer. I'd strongly avoid them personally.

[Agent]

Origineel geplaatst door Viking2121:

Sure its already been answered, I had to do just this, I had a Nighthawk R8000 router, amazing router when its not overheating, but its QoS was absolutely terrible, It would max out the CPU in the thing and it would just reboot out of the blue. I tried DDWRT and the Advanced Tomato on it and it just had all kinds of issues. Once day it just rebooted and it like factory reset its self so I unplugged it and threw in the trash, all that port forwarding for my server and QoS settings I was done with it.

I bought a TP-Link AX4400 and QoS is amazing on it, I limit the smart TV's, some of the lower end computers, and it does it only threw internet traffic, like local file transfers I can keep it at full speed which is awesome. the only issue is the 160mhz on the wifi is kinda garbage, it works and when it does its fast, I get over Gigabit real speed with it, but it limits what other devices can see it on the 5ghz band and of course 2.4ghz I can only get about half of my 500mbps internet speed on a good day.

I did play with a cheaper Asus router and the QoS was pretty decent with it as well but of course a little more basic, im not sure what their higher end ones are like.

I absolutely hate netgear crap, they never seems to work right, ton of security issues they never patch out, their support is worse than your local drug dealer. I'd strongly avoid them personally.

While having QoS turned on is better than nothing at all. It is not the perfect solution for combatting bufferbloat related issues.

SQM is much more advanced such as FQ-CoDel or CAKE and requires far less input from the user once configured.