[Firmware Bugs] RT-AC3100 Firmware 3.0.0.4.380_858

[lilstone87]

Well I know Adaptive QoS is now recommended to use for when running QoS. However with this new router, I decided to test both QoS option's, and even the bandwidth limiter option. Here's a couple things I noticed when testing these three options.

When going to the "Adaptive QoS" tab, and turning on Adaptive QoS. I set my bandwidth speeds manually, and hit applied. After doing this, I tested my speeds, and noticed my speed's weren't being capped to what I set them at. While doing this, I noticed the "Gameboost" tab, and so I clicked on it. I seen an option for "LAN Boost" so I turned it on, and after doing so, my speed's were now capped at what I set them to. If you're gonna give the customer the option to manually set the bandwidth limits they want overall for there connection, then it should work without having to enable "LAN Boost" first.

Now onto Traditional QoS, I enabled it, and set my bandwidth limits I wanted to use. After I went to the page for setting bandwidth limits for each priority, from lowest to highest. I set them, and after I ran a speedtest, and noticed my speeds were again going past the limits I set. So then I decided to set a couple devices to different priorities, and after I decided to test my speeds again. Now when testing my speed's, I was being capped at 16mbps max on the download side. I even gave the testing device highest priority, and still couldn't get above 16mbps down. I currently have my download set at 205mbps down. So currently "Traditional QoS" isn't working correctly at all, as once you give any device a priority tag, everything becomes limited to 16mbps down max for me.

Finally I tested Bandwidth Limiter, and it seems to work like it should, as I gave a couple devices different limits, and them devices were capped at the correct numbers I gave them.

One last thing I will continue to test thing's, and will update this thread with any other bugs I notice, and if anyone else has some to add feel free. Because I plan to use this thread to report any bugs, I find with this latest official firmware by asus for the RT-AC3100.

1. Firmware version: latest official version 3.0.0.4.380_858
2. Have you done factory reset after update: Yes
3. Bugs: QoS not working properly.
4. This is not needed, and the title has all the needed info listed already.

 

[Puppa]

Did you manually reboot after setting QoS but before enabling LAN Boost? It's possible that there's an issue with when the values get set in the router rather than dependence on LAN Boost. In general, when I tweak QoS on any router, I reboot before testing. That will ensure me that my settings were taken before I move on to other tweaks.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

 

[lilstone87]

Did you manually reboot after setting QoS but before enabling LAN Boost? It's possible that there's an issue with when the values get set in the router rather than dependence on LAN Boost. In general, when I tweak QoS on any router, I reboot before testing. That will ensure me that my settings were taken before I move on to other tweaks.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Pretty sure I tried this, and I always reboot the router, after first fully configuring the router manually after every firmware upgrade I do. Still the "Traditional QoS" is broken on the AC3100 currently, as I said above, as soon as you give any device a priority, download speed's are capped to a around a 15mbps max for all devices.

 

[vanic]

Pretty sure I tried this, and I always reboot the router, after first fully configuring the router manually after every firmware upgrade I do. Still the "Traditional QoS" is broken on the AC3100 currently, as I said above, as soon as you give any device a priority, download speed's are capped to a around a 15mbps max for all devices.

Yes, traditional qos is broken. I suggest user to use adaptive qos or bandwidth limiter. Traditional qos isn't easy to use for normal user, and I have tried a lot of ways to make it better, but there are too many limitations here.

Thanks,
Vanic

 

[lilstone87]

Yes, traditional qos is broken. I suggest user to use adaptive qos or bandwidth limiter. Traditional qos isn't easy to use for normal user, and I have tried a lot of ways to make it better, but there are too many limitations here.

Thanks,
Vanic

Thanks for confirming that Vanic. I like using "Adaptive QoS" but like I listed in my original post above, my only main complaint is. When setting the download/upload limit's. It doesn't seem to actually limit your connection to them speed's. Which Merlin said is normal, however a lot of us customers have internet with our ISP's, and they provide a feature called "Powerboost". Which will give you a boost of speed higher then your rated speed's, that can last up to 5-10 second's at a time. The issue is though, if I can't set my download/upload to limit to my provisioned speed's of 205/20. Any device connecting to my router, could easily go well above that set limit, and when pushing speed's that high, it's common for it to affect latency, which is one of the main reason's I would use QoS.

Also I know it isn't common for devices to use that much bandwidth alone, but the meaning of QoS to me, is to limit even giving any device that chance to go above that limit. As my house hold does play games online, and such. So keeping latency as steady as possible on my end is important to me.

 

[Puppa]

One problem with QoS (and this has bit me on my 3200) is the time period over which the rates are determined. For example, my Xbox could send 5Mb over a period of 1 second, and everyone would agree that it is functioning at 5Mb/s transmit. But say it sends 5Mb in 0.5s, and 0Mb in next 0.5s. Rate for first 0.5s is actually 10Mb/s. If the router is sampling over a larger time interval, in this way, rate limits can be bypassed by devices. Mikrotik has some settings to cover this (Max burst rate, etc), but home routers don't offer this level of control. With limited CPU resources, the problem gets worse because more calculation is required as more devices are connected to the network. As a result, my PC can transmit in bursts and swamp all my other equipment despite QoS being enabled on the router. Without a more advanced router, my only workaround was to make adjustments on my PC to force it to be less of a bandwidth hog. But many devices don't offer this. I'm hoping the higher clock rate on the newest models will help some with this problem.

 

[sfx2000]

When going to the "Adaptive QoS" tab, and turning on Adaptive QoS. I set my bandwidth speeds manually, and hit applied. After doing this, I tested my speeds, and noticed my speed's weren't being capped to what I set them at. While doing this, I noticed the "Gameboost" tab, and so I clicked on it. I seen an option for "LAN Boost" so I turned it on, and after doing so, my speed's were now capped at what I set them to. If you're gonna give the customer the option to manually set the bandwidth limits they want overall for there connection, then it should work without having to enable "LAN Boost" first.

Let me turn this upside down for you and maybe it becomes more clear...

Think of QoS (Traffic Shaping) as a committed data rate - so if I was 20 percent of the capacity guaranteeed for a client, and using SIP/RTP (let's say this is a VOIP client), we can guarantee X percentage of airtime and bandwidth - if the channel is free, then the client will get all of the bandwidth/airtime, but if the channel is congested, then the QoS/Shaping comes into play and generally will give that client the amount of time/capacity as provisioned...

QoS isn't about limiting the channel, it's about making Quality commitments to the channel..

 

[sfx2000]

QoS isn't about limiting the channel, it's about making Quality commitments to the channel..

And some are even more adaptive by allowing commitments on a client/application level..

 

[vanic]

Hi all,
@sfx2000 , his concept is right and correct. "QoS isn't about limiting the channel, it's about making Quality commitments to the channel." Almost people want is "bandwidth limiter", not QoS.

Thanks,
Vanic

 

[sfx2000]

Hi all,
@sfx2000 , his concept is right and correct. "QoS isn't about limiting the channel, it's about making Quality commitments to the channel." Almost people want is "bandwidth limiter", not QoS.

Thanks,
Vanic

Yep...

Guess my old 3gpp2/ieee standards hat still fits

 

[lilstone87]

Well then I'm fine with QoS not limiting things like I want, and if the new "Bandwidth Limiter" option is something good for that. Then as a customer, it would be nice to add an option to the "Bandwidth Limiter", in which you can maybe set a limit for both download/upload for "all" lan devices. As it only makes sense to give that kind of option with this feature, as it can take awhile to add every device to the list. Plus you would have to add every new device that connect's to the router. I'm just a person who likes to keep things as simple as possible. So maybe in a future firmware, under the "Bandwidth Limiter" you can add a check box option, that says "Limit all Lan devices" with a download/upload box to input the limits you want to use.

 

[Mears148]

Let me turn this upside down for you and maybe it becomes more clear...

Think of QoS (Traffic Shaping) as a committed data rate - so if I was 20 percent of the capacity guaranteeed for a client, and using SIP/RTP (let's say this is a VOIP client), we can guarantee X percentage of airtime and bandwidth - if the channel is free, then the client will get all of the bandwidth/airtime, but if the channel is congested, then the QoS/Shaping comes into play and generally will give that client the amount of time/capacity as provisioned...

QoS isn't about limiting the channel, it's about making Quality commitments to the channel..

I think we are mixing up "Adaptive QoS" and "Traditional QoS" a bit here. First of all, Traditional QoS is not in any way a traffic shaper. Traffic shapers typically use DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) to analyze packets coming from the WAN to the LAN and tag traffic for prioritization. This is what ASUS calls Adaptive QoS and others such as Qualcomm call Streamboost etc. The explanations for how QoS does not limit bandwidth when there is no congestion only holds true for Tradtional QoS, and it is important to make that distinction. This is why Tradtional QoS settings allow for device agnostic bandwidth limit percentages. When traffic to multiple devices is detected over Tradtional QoS, then each device will get its percentage value set by the user. Adaptive QoS on the other hand is a very different beast and does not operate in this manner. As I stated before Adaptive QoS is all about DPI and actually DOES us bandwidth limit settings because if it didn't then without more granular control settings like Traditional QoS it would be completely useless. Consider the common place advice that Adaptive QoS should be set to 10% below max download/upload tested speeds. This is key because this advice would have to be changed to the value you want each device to get when there is congestion, not the total tested speed minus 10% to make any sense. More then one client hitting the max connection speed would not help anything at all. So I hope that helps clear things up a little bit. It is kind of hard to explain in few words so this got lengthy and I apologize.

Just as a side note though, as @vanic already knows, I have posted the same problems using Adaptive QoS on this router, where I never had these issues on my DLink with Streamboost. There is definitely a problem with ADAPTIVE QoS on this latest firmware release and even on Merlin's release. If functioning properly Adaptive QoS should only allow the max bandwidth settings to be reached adding all the devices utilizing bandwidth at any given time together.