VDSL2/FTTC - Increasing SNR Margin, to reduce packet loss and increase connection reliability

So, I've extensively tested packet loss while downloading on another device, and it's running well now. I limited upload and download bandwidth to 65%, which keeps packet loss below 1%.

I also deleted any extra QOS rules that might be causing issues.
 
Update - I found that fixing the SNR Margin at 6DB (on my older router it would sometimes automatically choose 3DB), and setting the QOS to limit download and upload speeds to 90% of available bandwidth, this kept packet loss below 1% :)

You can also prioritise ICMP (ping) packets on Asus routers too, so that if someone is downloading on your home network, it shouldn't impact online gaming.
 
g67575 said:
You can also prioritise ICMP (ping) packets on Asus routers too, so that if someone is downloading on your home network, it shouldn't impact online gaming.
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Why would this make any difference to gaming or anything else except actual ICMP responses (which aren't something that really matters)?
 
I haven't tested that much yet. If not ICMP, what kind of traffic should be prioritized for online gaming? Just ordinary UDP/TCP traffic on specific ports?

Doesn't the ping reported in games actually mean anything in terms of sending and receiving data to the game server?

I did find that prioritizing ICMP traffic helped with pinging websites (preventing dropped packets during file downloads), does this have any real impact on Internet usage?
 
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g67575 said:
I haven't tested that much yet. If not ICMP, what kind of traffic should be prioritized for online gaming? Just ordinary UDP/TCP traffic on specific ports?
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Prioritising ICMP by itself probably won't make much difference. It is only a "control" protocol - a ping is just one of the message types (Echo). ICMP exists only to allow the two ends of an IP communication to exchange status information.

A better approach is to prioritise small packets of whatever protocol. VOIP in particular but also typically gaming will only use relatively small packets, whereas bulk downloads will use the full size the end to end link supports.

The simple way is to limit the maximum throughput on your upload (and if you have a decent ISP they should be doing the same on their end for the download) to just below the sync rate.

Full QoS rules would use different queues for different protocols but games in particular use a pretty random selection of ports and protocols so simply prioritising smaller packets is probably the best you can do.

Doesn't the ping reported in games actually mean anything in terms of sending and receiving data to the game server?
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Unlikely. Some games may use the ping to choose which server you are connected to, but the actual communication won't use ICMP.

I did find that prioritizing ICMP traffic helped with pinging websites (preventing dropped packets during file downloads), does this have any real impact on Internet usage?
Click to expand...

No, what you found was that prioritizing ICMP traffic helped with not dropping ICMP packets. Other packets may have been dropped instead of the ICMP packets.
 
I did a quick test regarding this.

My packet loss was around 0.2% to 0.6%, so totally fine. However I then disabled QOS and packet loss increased from around 0.5% to 1.2%. I ran these tests a few times to get a basic average.

My conclusion is that QOS helps reduce packet loss. My router is a Draytek Vigor 2860n.
 
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