Buffer Bloat

Rainmaker said:
Did you repeat the test a few times in both browsers, to confirm the difference was the browser and nothing else? There are loads of variables here - different browser engines, tracking protection, SmartScreen, extensions etc etc. That's before you even consider the fact that no two runs will be the same, as your local network, router, and the wider Internet will differ from microsecond to microsecond. I'd run it again a few times, and if it averages out start looking at your router. If the test keeps showing Edge is ****, then switch to Firefox like the rest of us I suppose. :p
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Tried it on different system on same network, got a B for Firefox this time, and C for Edge. But this system is weaker than the main rig, so the B is expected (It uses one of those old cheap and dirty Qualcomm Atheros gigabit connections on the motherboard that basically dump everything onto the CPU and the secondary system uses an i5 3570 (non-K) so it has it's work cut out normally anyway).

And yes, tried it a few more times on main rig. Firefox is OK with an A, it's once Edge is used it becomes a C. So users need to be aware that browser difference can make very differing results come up.
 
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More experimenting today.

I think that the connection is generally a bit poor. Extended testing shows that there does seem to be an issue with bufferbloat, but I am not sure how to fix it.

I tried Adaptive QOS and almost as expected that did little. Cake on the other hand worked immediately and seems to be extremely good. I have never heard of Cake before so I am reserved about it. Does Cake need the bandwidth setting to 10% below maximum? (That's what I currently have it set to).

Well, I set it to about 7% below and that seems to work just fine.
 
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SpellowHouse said:
UGH!!!

This is the result with the new router.....



The amazing thing is that NOTHING is configured in the new router. It seems that the problem was the old router - which I specifically bought becuase it was supposed to minimise things like buffer bloat.
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Whats the exact model of your router please?
 
robinsmith3 said:
Whats the exact model of your router please?
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In fact over the next few hours I tested it again and again, and that result was just a one-off. Most of the time the result was the same as the old router. The one huge difference is that with the old router anti-buffer bloat was not working at all so it made no difference. I suspect this was because my ISP uses pppoe and for some reason the XR1000 really falls apart with pppoe. If I placed a router in front of the XR1000, so the first router was doing the pppoe, amazingly the buffer issues disappeared. However, using two routers is not an option really.
The new router runs Merlin, which is really important. That has Cake, which has completely eliminated the problem. Cake is included in Merlin for all of the supported routers, I believe, which are all Asus.
 
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SpellowHouse said:
Interestingly, I just talked to Zen and they told me pppoe is optional. There is a way to configure the router without selecting it. Am chasing this up....
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DHCP or PPPoE won't make any difference if the issue lies within Zen's network.

Do you have a Think Broadband ping monitor enabled?
 
ChrisD. said:
DHCP or PPPoE won't make any difference if the issue lies within Zen's network.

Do you have a Think Broadband ping monitor enabled?
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I guess. It was just interesting that the only reason I junked the XR1000 was it had a bug in pppoe, not it seems there was a way to "not" use pppoe. Anyway, not bothered really, I just got sidetracked.
I'm not too concerned with the poor performance, Cake has taken care of it. Just that it is pretty poor. I doubt somehow that Zen have any performance tolerances for latency??
 
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SpellowHouse said:
I doubt somehow that Zen have any performance tolerances for latency??
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Nope, they told me up to 70ms to a London server is acceptable for full fibre.

However they state in their terms and conditions that they can only make changes to your service without notifying you if it isn't going to be a signifant change. I argued that tripling my idle latency is significant. I got out and moved to Aquiss on the same line and back to ~6ms from mid 20's at times with Zen post GEA migration, and much more consistent speeds.
 
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ChrisD. said:
Nope, they told me up to 70ms to a London server is acceptable for full fibre.

However they state in their terms and conditions that they can only make changes to your service without notifying you if it isn't going to be a signifant change. I argued that tripling my idle latency is significant. I got out and moved to Aquiss on the same line and back to ~6ms from mid 20's at times with Zen post GEA migration, and much more consistent speeds.
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The performance without Cake is poor, but with Cake its consistantly ....



You can see I have lost some performance there. I am nolonger achieving 300/50Mbps but that's really not too bad.

I'll look in to Aquiss though..
 
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SpellowHouse said:
The performance without Cake is poor, but with Cake its consistantly ....



You can see I have lost some performance there. I am nolonger achieving 300/50Mbps but that's really not too bad.

I'll look in to Aquiss though..
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I have an AC86U and the puter hardwired to the router running the latest Merlin (386.10?) with Cake enabled and I don’t get A+

What am I doing wrong? It’s FTTP 500/500 and I get A with 10-15ms jitter
 
Shoza said:
I have an AC86U and the puter hardwired to the router running the latest Merlin (386.10?) with Cake enabled and I don’t get A+

What am I doing wrong? It’s FTTP 500/500 and I get A with 10-15ms jitter
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I don't know how you have Cake configured, but I reduced my bandwidth in the Cake settings until I got 0 0. For me that was a reduction of about 7% or so on both Upload and Download. Cake seemed to take a little more, by itself, but that was probably my fault in the other parts of the configuration. Anyway, it needed it. Using a Zen broadband speed test (which I would expect to be the best possible result) I am getting 274/47 which is really good.
 
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