ASUS Adaptive QOS Questions

[eusriso]

I am trying to setup Adaptive QOS on Asus AC3200. I am using firmware 3.0.0.4.378_6091 and I am using Chrome and Firefox.

It is not clear to me what the settings do with Adaptive QOS. It seems I can set priority of applications and I can set priority of devices. Which takes precedence? If I have a PC set at highest running a file sharing up set at last priority and a PC set at medium running a game which set as highest priority which application will take precedence on network traffic - the file sharing or the game?

 

[eusriso]

Looking at this closer I have another question. I ran http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu test on my network from a PC with high priority.

With QOS on I get -

Network Packet Buffering may be excessive

We estimate your uplink as having 620 ms of buffering. This level can in some situations prove somewhat high, and you may experience degraded performance when performing interactive tasks such as web-surfing while simultaneously conducting large uploads. Real-time applications, such as games or audio chat, may also work poorly when conducting large uploads at the same time.
We estimate your downlink as having 150 ms of buffering. This level may serve well for maximizing speed while minimizing the impact of large transfers on other traffic.

With QOS off I get -

We estimate your uplink as having 110 ms of buffering. This level may serve well for maximizing speed while minimizing the impact of large transfers on other traffic.
We estimate your downlink as having 51 ms of buffering. This level may serve well for maximizing speed while minimizing the impact of large transfers on other traffic.

To me this implies that QOS is making my network worse - not better? Does anyone understand and can explain what this really means?

 

[System Error Message]

packet buffering means that packets are put into a que instead of being processed instantly. If a route is full than packets would have to wait so instead of trying to send everything it has a que. The que can be processed either out of order as in packets are rearranged while waiting for transmission or packets can be put into the que based on the order they arrive in. You cant change the que size on asus though but you can on mikrotik. If i remember correctly a que size of 500 packets is recommended for below 100Mb/s speeds while above you can use 5000 packet queues. It could be that your adaptive QoS is setting such a large buffer size thinking you have so much internet.

 

[eusriso]

packet buffering means that packets are put into a que instead of being processed instantly. If a route is full than packets would have to wait so instead of trying to send everything it has a que. The que can be processed either out of order as in packets are rearranged while waiting for transmission or packets can be put into the que based on the order they arrive in. You cant change the que size on asus though but you can on mikrotik. If i remember correctly a que size of 500 packets is recommended for below 100Mb/s speeds while above you can use 5000 packet queues. It could be that your adaptive QoS is setting such a large buffer size thinking you have so much internet.

I have a 2 meg up and a 10 meg down. Using Speedtest.Net I confirmed I am actually getting thoses speeds. I had QOS set using those speeds on prior tests. When I tested with 5 Down and 1 up set in QOS I get:

We estimate your uplink as having 1500 ms of buffering. This is quite high, and you may experience substantial disruption to your network performance when performing interactive tasks such as web-surfing while simultaneously conducting large uploads. With such a buffer, real-time applications such as games or audio chat can work quite poorly when conducting large uploads at the same time.
We estimate your downlink as having 350 ms of buffering. This level may serve well for maximizing speed while minimizing the impact of large transfers on other traffic.

Setting QOS to 5 up and 20 down I get -

We estimate your uplink as having 330 ms of buffering. This level may serve well for maximizing speed while minimizing the impact of large transfers on other traffic.
We were not able to produce enough traffic to load the downlink buffer, or the downlink buffer is particularly small. You probably have excellent behavior when downloading files and attempting to do other tasks.

So can someone explain - should I set the QOS to what my real speed is or should I use a higher number? Will QOS work properly using inflated numbers?

 

[RMerlin]

It's actually recommended to do the opposite: configure QoS to be slightly below your maximum link rate. This is because your Internet connection will always be much slower than your ISP's own connection, which leads to those buffer issues when downloading at full rate. Setting QoS just slightly below will reduce latency under high load.

 

[eusriso]

It's actually recommended to do the opposite: configure QoS to be slightly below your maximum link rate. This is because your Internet connection will always be much slower than your ISP's own connection, which leads to those buffer issues when downloading at full rate. Setting QoS just slightly below will reduce latency under high load.

Ok thanks. I will set QOS to 9.5 meg down and 1.9 up. Two more questions. It seems that Adaptive QOS has two settings - one is by application type - gaming, voip, file transfer, etc. and the other by device. Which priority takes precedence - the device or the application? If I don't assign a priority to a device what happens?

 

[NGRhodes]

Devices priorities are set first, then applications are prioritised per device.

Adapative QoS is VERY sensitive to QoS speeds not being set too high. I've not had time to confirm, but I think this is reason for my previous issues with Adaptive QoS.
As an example I have a 57Mbps incoming connection, but Adaptive QoS won't work if set to more than 52 Mbps. Outgoing connection is much less sensitive, I have 3.2Mbps out, and adaptive QoS works fine at 3.1Mbps.
I tested by having a long running download/upload (ubuntu torrents saturating my connection both ways) on one machine (low priority) and speedtest on another (higher priority) in Adaptive QoS, and experimented with different configured speeds in the QoS tab. Too high figures and the speedtest would record only a low value of only around 4Mbps, reducing the setting until speed test suddenly jumped to very close to the configured speed. Half a Mbps too high and my Speedtest speed would collapse.
With DD-WRT on the same router I found running the same test as above, I got a more gradual change.
Note the exact percentages WILL vary and your results different to mine.

 

[snakebite3]

I confuse about what you said about prioritizing devices and then App. The 3200 has more Adaptive QoS options than AC68u. I see don't see that option on mine AC68u.

 

[NGRhodes]

I confuse about what you said about prioritizing devices and then App. The 3200 has more Adaptive QoS options than AC68u. I see don't see that option on mine AC68u.

Adaptive QoS Prioritises by device priority first, then priorities Apps within each device.
You prioritise Devices in the Bandwidth monitor tab by dragging and dropping the priority labels over devices.

 

[Gitsum]

So if you don't set any device priorities, then the QOS system should use your app settings for all devices then? Is that how I'm reading that?
I would prefer to have the app settings working across all the devices, not just one device getting more priority over another no matter what type of traffic it's using.

 

[fax]

Yes, thats correct. However, if you know that a device is using a particular service or resource that is not well identified/covered by the fixed priority categories in the adaptive configuration then you may need to set a specific priority to this device.

E.g. A Skipe phone is attached to your router and you want to give to this hardware (and skype in it) higher priority. Which would be the category under the QoS configuration that you will put first? Will it be the category "VOIP and Instant Messaging" or "Video and Audio Streaming" or "Others". And will it work?

 

[snakebite3]

Adaptive QoS Prioritises by device priority first, then priorities Apps within each device.
You prioritise Devices in the Bandwidth monitor tab by dragging and dropping the priority labels over devices.

Are you sure it's just not for sorting the list? I can't much info about it.
"2. Device bandwidth monitor:
The current bandwidth of each device will be listed on this page. User can manage their client devices if total bandwidth is limited."
How does it manage it? Unlike traditional QoS the bandwidth monitor doesn't define priority values.
I think it just make the list sortable. Did you test it to know for sure it limit uploads?