Looking to replace router to fix bufferbloat lag spikes

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Dark12

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Hey folks,

I recently got back into competitive gaming (cs2) and I am noticing some pretty annoying jitter on my Spectrum gigabit plan. (1gb/35mb)

I did some troubleshooting and found that my AX6600 router has pretty awful bufferbloat problems. Here is my test and test2.

I am looking to replace my current router, preferably something not TP-Link. My house is small and single story. I am in line to get fiber hopefully this year as they are laying the lines this Spring.
I also run a small Plex server for family members.

If anyone has any suggestions on a good router that fits the bill, I would really appreciate it!
 
Did you try connecting direct to your ISP's router / modem to confirm if it is your AX6600 and not your ISP?

Is your AX6600 fully updated latest firmware?
Do you have any extra features turned on you could turn off?

The AX6600 is a pretty beefy high end router, at least when it was released, presume you are hard wired and not going over wifi..

Out of curiosity , here is my results:

https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=1a735add-40d2-4d3b-9f02-235afb0bfbb6

I run a Pfsense on a total overkill Dell T5820 Quad core Xeon / 64Gb ram to my ISP's 1Gb/1Gb Fiber, with 10Gb from my pfsense to my brocade switch and 10Gb to my desktop.
 
I just recently got a Ubiquiti cloud gateway max. I do have a tp-link mesh system for wifi though.
These results are while playing wow, watching NCIS and two kids on tablets.

1739744592424.png
 
I can also confirm Ubiquity Edgerouter X (that's an older device, with 1Gbps ports) works perfectly with low latency gaming. With bufferbloat mitigation enabled, I get score A, with disabled, I get B (and still 9ms latency). Disabled it for time being, as I don't do any competitive gaming.
 
Thanks for the comments, folks.

I tried turning on the QoS in the AX6600 options and it yielded better results. https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=fdb4e01b-2142-4ef5-94db-46a4379f974a

The problem with the QoS on this particular router is that is that it sometimes halves the bandwidth of my Plex server.

EDIT: Thinking of ordering this ASUS RT-BE92U BE9700
I like that is has 2.5Gb LAN ports so when I do upgrade to fiber I won't have to worry about the 1gb bottleneck.

EDIT2: Interesting turn of events. Plugging directly into my MB8611 gives just as bad, if not WORSE results. https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=7553d364-4d03-40a3-a343-e0d62046b8a1

EDIT3: Seems like this is an ISP issue. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13771993
I recently moved out to rural Illinois and I'm using Spectrum cable. According to that post, some ISP's use a large buffer to limit congestion.
What a joke.
 
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I had that Asus BE92U for about a week. It's just ok. Only 2x2 MIMO on 2.4/5Ghz. A lot of people at Asus forums report connectivity issues. I was coming from an AX86U which was a great router for me. I put Merlin on it and never looked back. My father needed a new router, so I gave my AX86U to him and tried the BE92U only to be disappointed. The BE86U is dual band, so no 6Ghz (and somewhat more money). I ended up building my own OPNSense router and using an Alta Labs AP.

If I were going to use an off the shelf router, I'd probably get the GL.iNet Flint 3 when it's released.
 
kirbyrj said:
I had that Asus BE92U for about a week. It's just ok. Only 2x2 MIMO on 2.4/5Ghz. A lot of people at Asus forums report connectivity issues. I was coming from an AX86U which was a great router for me. I put Merlin on it and never looked back. My father needed a new router, so I gave my AX86U to him and tried the BE92U only to be disappointed. The BE86U is dual band, so no 6Ghz (and somewhat more money). I ended up building my own OPNSense router and using an Alta Labs AP.

If I were going to use an off the shelf router, I'd probably get the GL.iNet Flint 3 when it's released.
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Thank you for the input!

Sadly, I am realizing this isn't a router issue because I am still getting nasty packet buffering and jitter even when connected directly to the modem.

I am not very good with this type of thing, but the general consensus is I am screwed because this is something that some ISP's do to reduce their network congestion.
 
Dark12 said:
Thank you for the input!

Sadly, I am realizing this isn't a router issue because I am still getting nasty packet buffering and jitter even when connected directly to the modem.

I am not very good with this type of thing, but the general consensus is I am screwed because this is something that some ISP's do to reduce their network congestion.
Click to expand...
If you have confirmed bufferbloat them you connect PC directly to ISP modem, then you are screwed, there's nothing you can do, to my understanding.
 
pioruns said:
If you have confirmed bufferbloat them you connect PC directly to ISP modem, then you are screwed, there's nothing you can do, to my understanding.
Click to expand...
Thank you for confirming this. What a damn shame.

I presume there would be no point to have a tech come out and run some line tests since my speeds are fine, it's just that I get massive stuttering whenever any amount of load hits my network.
 
Dark12 said:
I recently got back into competitive gaming (cs2) and I am noticing some pretty annoying jitter on my Spectrum gigabit plan. (1gb/35mb)
Click to expand...

What speeds do you get with a regular speed test?
https://www.speedtest.net/

If you're not getting gigabit speeds (1gb/35mb) I would call Spectrum and ask them to verify your modem is provisioned properly and to check your signal levels. You may want to try a rental modem temporarily to see if your modem is causing the issue.
 
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I am considering trying a new modem to see if it would help with the bufferbloat issue, but most of the resources I am reading say it is an ISP problem.

My speeds are as advertised, roughly 950/36mbps, so that is why I am hesitant to bother asking them.
 
pioruns said:
I can also confirm Ubiquity Edgerouter X (that's an older device, with 1Gbps ports) works perfectly with low latency gaming. With bufferbloat mitigation enabled, I get score A, with disabled, I get B (and still 9ms latency). Disabled it for time being, as I don't do any competitive gaming.
Click to expand...
Quick question. If I were to get a router that has bufferbloat protection between my modem and router, could I still use my AX6600 to broadcast wifi to my house?
 
Perfect thank you.
I will start doing some research on a router with bufferbloat protection to put between my modem and wireless access point.
I am sure most here will recommend I build my own, but I have almost zero linux experience and it seems a bit daunting.
 
Dark12 said:
I am considering trying a new modem to see if it would help with the bufferbloat issue, but most of the resources I am reading say it is an ISP problem.
Click to expand...

Some of the latest cable modems have some nice anti-buffer bloat stuff. But I'm thinking if you're getting gig down, you've got a pretty new modem. Maybe look for diagnostics that show low or inconsistent signal strength/SnR or coherent complaints about your modem model floating around.

A little bit of traffic shaping on your end can help a lot. Upstream buffer bloat is much easier to reduce than downstream, but at gig speeds, downstream doesn't tend to get too bloated. The TLDR is if you use sensible queuing on your own device and set the limit at 80%-95% of your speed, you can typically eliminate excessive ISP buffers; there's some techniques that can do better and will adapt without needing to know the speed (I don't have experience with those, but it sounds nicer!)

Dark12 said:
I am sure most here will recommend I build my own, but I have almost zero linux experience and it seems a bit daunting.
Click to expand...

Well, everyone has to start somewhere... If you've got something Haswell or better with two gigE NIC ports, you can try running a firewall distribution like pfSense / opnsense (FreeBSD, not linux), or OpenWRT (usually run on a router, but will run on an x86 PC too) or just use a full featured distribution. What you need to manage bufferbloat isn't much; a little bit of NAT, a dhcp server, and the traffic shapping.

You'd typically put a wifi router in Access Point mode behind your traffic shapping/NAT router. If you really want, you could run traffic shapping with your shaper as a bridge betwen your wifi router as a router and your cable modem --- but that's not going to be shown in walkthroughs... You'd have to understand things to do it.
 
Jitter is typically not caused by local network issues but something inconsistent with an isp--especially when multiple tests at multiple times of the day have the same results.

If you're trying to do competitive gaming, you're going to need commercial and enterprise level low-latency connectivity. Fibre will usually do that since it's symmetrical and at >1gb speeds ping times to the default isp gateway are 1ms, but that still leaves their backbone and the route to whatever server you're connecting to.

wifi makes all this worse, so ditch that and run a cable for some immediate relief. wired > wireless -- always.
 
Sorry Dumb question here, isn't there some firmware update for your router where you can make your own customer firewall protocols and rules?

If all of the above suggestions and the manufacturer website did not help that is.
 
StevenJamesBorchard said:
Sorry Dumb question here, isn't there some firmware update for your router where you can make your own customer firewall protocols and rules?

If all of the above suggestions and the manufacturer website did not help that is.
Click to expand...

It's not so much firewall rules as it is Smart Queue Management. There might be an option for SQM on newer firmware. I know AsusWRT Merlin firmware would let you run various SQM techniques, but it generally didn't improve my bufferbloat very much in my case.
 
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