Adaptive QOS, have I set it wrong or am I expecting too much of it?

[Stuey3D]

Hi all I have an RT-AC68U router which has the latest 3.0.0.4.384_21140 firmware on it, my internet connection connects at around 56Mb down with around 10-11Mb upload.

I have been using the Adaptive QOS but it doesn't seem to do the job I am expecting, my expectations are either too high or I have set it wrong.

My scenario is as follows:

I have Adaptive QOS set to Game and I have manually restricted the speeds to 50Mb down & 8Mb up to reduce bufferbloat.

My Nintendo Switch is set to the highest priority with my laptop sitting just behind at High and the rest of my devices set to medium however I am having issues with the Switch maintaining connection when the Laptop has Steam open and downloading something.

When the laptop has Steam open and downloading the Adaptive QOS also shows that its using 53Mb down even though QOS is only restricted to 50Mb down, because of this the Switch then has all sorts of connectivity issues in online games.

From my config I would expect the Switch to be prioritised and the laptop having its speed reduced accordingly, with both topping out at only 50Mb to prevent bufferbloat and connectivity issues.

Are my expectations too high, or do I not have QOS configured correctly or have I stumbled upon a bug in the system?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Stuey3D]

I have managed to fix my issue and I shall now explain the steps I carried out.

I switched to Merlin 384.5 as I remember FQ_Codel on the Adaptive QOS page was far better for BufferBloat (A/A+ grade vs B/C on stock firmware on the DSL reports speed test) this improved things slightly but still had issues.
I then disabled QOS completely and the Switch worked perfect whilst Steam was downloading on the laptop, however disabling will increase the bufferbloat and cause other issues.
So what I have done now is turn on Traditional QOS and have the device priorities and speed limits set the same as I did on Adaptive QOS and now everything works perfect (or seems to be for now)

It appears that Adaptive QOS is trying too hard and getting confused as to what to do with the various data its trying to handle, whereas the Traditional QOS doesn't and therefore results in far better performance.


TLDR: Switch to Traditional QOS from Adaptive QOS

 

[kfp]

I wouldn’t be surprised if Steam downloads are also categorized as Game traffic and therefore had same priority as your Switch traffic. Have you tried generating traffic in other ways? Bittorrent or just a large HTTP download.

 

[Sinner]

steam im pretty sure comes thru under gaming and torents in downloads. its impressive really how well it actually works without modification. some game patchers im finding come thru as web still tho. ive managed to get a perfect setup with only 2 custom rules in my freshjr qos setup and disabled most of the stock ones.

 

[Stuey3D]

I wouldn’t be surprised if Steam downloads are also categorized as Game traffic and therefore had same priority as your Switch traffic. Have you tried generating traffic in other ways? Bittorrent or just a large HTTP download.

I think you might be right with that, hence why changing to traditional QOS worked best for me.

What I found odd and what was my daughter was able to watch YouTube on her iPad whilst the Steam Download was going with no issues it was only the Switch that was the issue, so I think QOS was messing with the ping times as the Switch for online gaming only uses around 300Kb/s which is next to nothing.

 

[kfp]

I think you might be right with that, hence why changing to traditional QOS worked best for me.

What I found odd and what was my daughter was able to watch YouTube on her iPad whilst the Steam Download was going with no issues it was only the Switch that was the issue, so I think QOS was messing with the ping times as the Switch for online gaming only uses around 300Kb/s which is next to nothing.

YouTube buffers so it has some room to ‘starve’ before becoming laggy. Glad you found a setup that works!

 

[Stuey3D]

Ok whilst I've fixed the Switch connectivity issues whilst downloading from Steam, switching to Traditional QOS has now caused me another issue.

With Traditional QOS the Nat Acceleration doesn't work anymore and as such the transfers from the hard drive on the Routers USB port has now plummeted from around 16MB/s to 3MB/s also my MyCloud has had a small reduction from 60MB/s - around 50MB/s but I can live with that.

I've also noticed when I max out my downloads using the Traditional QOS the routers CPU nearly maxes out which is expected given that its now doing all the work without hardware acceleration.

Am I at the limit with what I can expect from my 68U and would a more powerful Blue Cave or 86U give me the benefits of QOS without spanking my internal transfer speeds as much, as right now with the 68U I can choose the following scenarios:

Adaptive QOS - Kills Switch online gaming when downloading from Steam on another machine
Traditional QOS - High Router CPU usage and slower internal transfers especially to the routers USB port. Fixes the problem with Switch online gaming whilst Steam downloads.
No QOS - Seems to work with the Switch gaming whilst Steam downloads but this will cause major bufferbloat on my limited connection.

Also I presume with QOS disabled even though the devices have a priority label still set that is effectively ignored?

Is there a setting I am missing somewhere that would give me a decent all round solution or am I looking at new hardware?

 

[Sinner]

Blizzard launcher downloads also fall in the gaming category. Which i guess sorta makes sense. I personally found to easier to just arrange the priorities in a way that made sense for our needs and made 2 custom rules for the actual games so the games, web browsing and netfliz dont get choked out by gaming downloads. In this setup i have gaming at the bottom just above file transfers. Works great

 

[Stuey3D]

I've just opted to disable QOS for now, seems like the best middle ground in terms of the Switch still working whilst Steam is downloading but with NAT Acceleration enabled allowing for fast transfers to my connected storage devices.

 

[kfp]

Have you looked into @FreshJR’s QoS?

 

[Stuey3D]

Have you looked into @FreshJR’s QoS?

I did have a look into that but to be honest it looked far too complicated for me to understand.

I'll leave QOS off as to be honest I'm not noticing any noticeable performance drop without it. Bufferbloat is now a C grade on the DSL Reports speed test but in normal usage the connection seems decent enough.

I was considering weather a newer router would be worth it, if it would allow decent QOS whilst maintaining decent transfer speeds to my network hard drives, but convincing the missus to allow me to spend £180 on new hardware which may or may not fix my issue is going to be hard.

 

[kfp]

I'll leave QOS off as to be honest I'm not noticing any noticeable performance drop without it. Bufferbloat is now a C grade on the DSL Reports speed test but in normal usage the connection seems decent enough.

I was considering weather a newer router would be worth it, if it would allow decent QOS whilst maintaining decent transfer speeds to my network hard drives, but convincing the missus to allow me to spend £180 on new hardware which may or may not fix my issue is going to be hard.

Like you said, if there’s no noticeable performance drop then you don’t need to spend more money to replace a working device.

 

[lilstone87]

Adaptive QoS with Trendmicro's DPI is still to up, and down with its classifying of traffic. Someone in my household just the other day was playing Fortnite, which has been a very popular game for close to a year now. But oddly the other day while they were playing, I had Adaptive QoS enabled, with the latest signature. However while they were in a game, Adaptive QoS was classifying the data as general traffic.

Which to me is beyond weird, and silly. I'm guessing with Adaptive QoS, and Trendmicro DPI. They don't use any IP lookup info to boost traffic detection? Because I'm very sure the traffic was being passed to a dedicated game server. Still the traffic overall wasn't classified properly, and this is for a game that's the most popular online right now, and has been out for close to a year now.

Overall I expect Adaptive QoS with DPI to handle this way better, and I can understand certain people wanting to use Traditional QoS. At least the one's who know there traffic well, and can manually prioritize it either by IP, or Ports being used. I'm not saying Adaptive QoS isn't usable, I just know it still lags behind on classifying traffic with DPI properly. So it isn't for everyone.

 

[kfp]

Which to me is beyond weird, and silly. I'm guessing with Adaptive QoS, and Trendmicro DPI. They don't use any IP lookup info to boost traffic detection? Because I'm very sure the traffic was being passed to a dedicated game server. Still the traffic overall wasn't classified properly, and this is for a game that's the most popular online right now, and has been out for close to a year now.

<snip>

Overall I expect Adaptive QoS with DPI to handle this way better, and I can understand certain people wanting to use Traditional QoS. At least the one's who know there traffic well, and can manually prioritize it either by IP, or Ports being used. I'm not saying Adaptive QoS isn't usable, I just know it still lags behind on classifying traffic with DPI properly.

Game servers change IP all the time, CDNs change all the time. Just because a game has been out for a while doesn’t mean much if infrastructure is always changing.

Which QoS/DPI do you think this lags behind? From which vendor?

 

[Sinner]

Adaptive QoS with Trendmicro's DPI is still to up, and down with its classifying of traffic. Someone in my household just the other day was playing Fortnite, which has been a very popular game for close to a year now. But oddly the other day while they were playing, I had Adaptive QoS enabled, with the latest signature. However while they were in a game, Adaptive QoS was classifying the data as general traffic.

Which to me is beyond weird, and silly. I'm guessing with Adaptive QoS, and Trendmicro DPI. They don't use any IP lookup info to boost traffic detection? Because I'm very sure the traffic was being passed to a dedicated game server. Still the traffic overall wasn't classified properly, and this is for a game that's the most popular online right now, and has been out for close to a year now.

Overall I expect Adaptive QoS with DPI to handle this way better, and I can understand certain people wanting to use Traditional QoS. At least the one's who know there traffic well, and can manually prioritize it either by IP, or Ports being used. I'm not saying Adaptive QoS isn't usable, I just know it still lags behind on classifying traffic with DPI properly. So it isn't for everyone.

I have to assume trend is far from complete with its dpi engine. It only recognises a few games but does this in an advanced way, much more advanced than just ports. Its actually impressive. Myself for those few instances ive made custom rules for my needs and then everything is perfect.

Ive put unidentified traffic into voip because we have a lot of unrecognised voip and it needs to be top priority... this would include teamspeak,ventrillo and discord. This also took care of the fps games in the house that are very ping sensitive. next I found WoW and blizzard stuff being put into gaming so I thought i'd put that 2nd priority but that didn't work because the game updates are also in same category and was too high. so I made a custom rule for the wow game only.

Next we had a lot of Idevices downloading so have custom rule to put those istore downloads/updates into downloads. So now I only have 2 custom rules, removed most of freshs except for the bottom section with the unidentified traffic and httpd stuff so its much cleaner than stock.
my priorities/%'s are now as follows:

10 - NETCONTROL
10 - VOIP - all unidentified traffic which is risky, all unidentified ping sensitive fps games and voice comm apps and wifi calling
10 - OTHERS - literally just for WoW because it buffers and is not as ping sensitive as other games
10 - WEB - web browsing so my bros wife doesn't murder someone lol and to make it feel snappy
30 - VIDEO - Netflix, youtube most online streaming media including internet radio etc
10 - GAMING - majority of console games for the kids and console downloads
10 - DOWNLOADS - iTunes and pc downloads and windows updates
10 - DEFAULT - empty.. nothing goes here

works flawlessly.

so in short I removed most of the rules from the script only left http/unidentified traffic ones and added 2 custom rules... done

 

[Sinner]

Since ive put the work in I might as well share. Heres my 2 custom rules for iTunes and WoW incase anyone else needs them:

DOWNLOADS
${tc} filter add dev br0 protocol all prio 6 u32 match mark 0x80080016 0xc03fffff flowid ${Others} #WOW Live
${tc} filter add dev br0 protocol all prio 6 u32 match mark 0x8004000A 0xc03fffff flowid ${Downloads} #Apple iTunes

UPLOADS
${tc} filter add dev eth0 protocol all prio 6 u32 match mark 0x40080016 0xc03fffff flowid ${Others} #WOW Live
${tc} filter add dev eth0 protocol all prio 6 u32 match mark 0x4004000A 0xc03fffff flowid ${Downloads} #Apple iTunes

 

[lilstone87]

Game servers change IP all the time, CDNs change all the time. Just because a game has been out for a while doesn’t mean much if infrastructure is always changing.

Which QoS/DPI do you think this lags behind? From which vendor?

Honestly I'm in no way comparing the Trendmicro DPI to another companies DPI system. I'm just pointing out the current way trendmicro's DPI system works isn't all that great to be honest. Improvements is something I would love to see done on their end. This includes the asus devs as well, regarding QoS overall.

Because you have people like FreshJR going over the way they have things handled within QoS, and the default's they're using isn't all that good. Reason people like FreshJR are putting their own time in, to improve things for people who don't know how to make such changes. The main reason a lot of people use QoS is for time sensitive programs, games, etc. Most in which use low amounts of data, they just need that data to be priority over most the traffic on their own network, and not have high usage data causing that data issues.

Which I hate even mentioning this here, as I know you know this already... But I'm not directly talking to YOU. I'm talking to the one's who handle the software side of things for these routers. The current state of QoS on these asus routers is honestly a joke. We're lucky to have people like Merlin, and FreshJR. Just think how long Traditional QoS was broken.. Asus still kept it as a feature/option to use on these newer routers. Merlin was finally able to get it working again on these newer routers, which is a big thanks to him.

But it's sad how long Asus, and its dev's left Traditional QoS within the software not working on these newer routers. I can only imagine the amount of customers who tried using Traditional QoS, not knowing it was broken on these newer routers. Because Asus never mentioned it, or added a warning it was broken on newer routers. They could of simply just removed it from being an option, but no they choose not to, which is sad to see. I'm very grateful to Merlin for the work he puts in, and he's the reason I have owned my share of Asus routers.

There's one thing I do appreciate by Asus, and that's they do put newer firmware build's out for their routers in a timely manner. Something you don't see from other router companies. Still to me that doesn't make it okay for them to include/keep features within their software, which are broken, or don't run all that great. I just wish they put more effort into the QoS side of things. I know they see people like FreshJR finding issues with the way there QoS handles traffic. Still I would prefer them to fix this stuff, and not require customers to use scripts/work around's from others, to get things working like they should.

 

[dtaht]

what lies underneath traditional and adaptive qos? fq_codel? sfq?

 

[RMerlin]

Stock firmware uses sfq. My firmware can patch rules to use fq_codel instead.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[Stuey3D]

I really dont understand QOS.

I've just got a ZyXEL VMG8924 which I am using in bridge mode for its (very good) VDSL modem, under its settings there is also a QOS option which automatically sets its speed from the link rate. However with it on and the ASUS QOS disabled as described above the Nintendo Switch again has issues if the laptop is downloading something (in this case DSL reports speed tester) however with the QOS off the Switch works perfect whilst the laptop is downloading even though according to DSL reports with it off bufferbloat is terrible.

I don't quite understand what is going wrong as the QOS on the ZyXEL is ONLY limiting the bandwidth to reduce bufferbloat which it does very well (DSL reports gives it a B grade which isnt so bad) its not looking at any traffic coming through to prioritise that etc, so you'd think that with a far better bufferbloat score and nothing being specifically managed by the QOS the Switch would connect perfectly with it enabled rather than with it disabled.