Bad bufferbloat

[jamesn123]

@AlexBetty 

Its not as simple as just telling you a router because it depends on many things such as budget, whether you want to future proof it for a fibre upgrade or just buy a router with a built in modem, whether you game or not, whether you are interested in WiFi 6 (again future proofing) etc

[AlexBetty]

@jamesn123 I see. I don't think my area will have fibre for a while and besides when I do get fibre I won't mind upgrading once again, with budget I once again I don't mind as I just want to fix this bufferbloat issue as much as possible. And yes I am mostly doing this to improve my online gaming experience and that's the main reason I want to upgrade. Thank you

[jamesn123]

@AlexBetty 

Worth noting even with a high spec router your bufferbloat results likely wont be that good because your on ADSL and its the worst for that kind of thing. 

[AlexBetty]

@jamesn123 I completely agree with you. I am just trying to find out what the best thing I can do to improve my network. I would really appreciate if you could recommend some routers with any budget for my situation as I am interested in trying to sort something out very soon. Thank you

[richbhanover]

I'm a long-time user of ADSL. I had 7mbps/768kbps service. I learned that bufferbloat can definitely be fixed by using the proper router. 

I have recommended to dozens of people in my small town (1700 population) to buy IQrouters to address the problem. But more and more equipment is becoming aware of the "lack of responsiveness" and bad latency.

See What Can I Do About Bufferbloat? for more details.

[AlexBetty]

@richbhanover Hi, can I ask how your network is currently setup with the iqrouter you mentioned. Are you plugging the iqrouter into the sky isp router or the iqrouter is an all in one? Thank you

[richbhanover]

Actually, I'm not a Sky customer. My ISP is Consolidated Communications in NH USA.

I plug the IQrouter into the Comtrend DSL modem supplied by my ISP, which I have used both in bridge mode, or as a gateway. Both work fine.

The IQrouter automatically determines the link speeds (up & down) then adjusts the SQM (Smart Queue Management) settings to optimize the link. I see minor increases in latency (20-30 msec) even when fully loading both upload and download. I regularly get an A on DSL Reports or Waveform.

[richbhanover]

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@jamesn123 wrote:

Worth noting even with a high spec router your bufferbloat results likely wont be that good because your on ADSL and its the worst for that kind of thing. 

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But that's the "magic" of the fq_codel or CAKE algorithms. Even though ADSL is slow (in bits per second), those SQM algorithms keep the network responsive so it feels snappy. You really have to try it.