Jumbo frames & wireless performance

[jathor]

i'm trying to optimize my network and im not super knowledgeable about a few things and need them cleared up.

running an ac66u with rmerlin 374.40

now... I want the best transfer speeds possible from all the computers and my htpc/nas

i set up jumbo frames at 9000 mtu. the only things connected directly are the xbox, blu ray and the htpc (all from switch supporting jumbo frames at 9000mtu) and the nas (direct on router).

now for the questions:

1) from what i understood, since they both (nas/htpc) have jumbo frame and 9000 mtu support they should work just fine with an improved transfer speed. right?

2) does this in any way affect wifi (for better or worse)? i have a printer, 3 laptops, 3 phones and 2 gaming pcs(on ac) running wirelessly.

3) i have qos enabled because we are 2 gamers here we we like to watch movies and shows and sometimes one watches/streams/downloads movies while the others play games, I know this disables hw acceleration but is it better to disable qos and enable hw acc?

thanks for your help guys

 

[thiggins]

With today's network adapter and processor bus designs, jumbo frames may not help and may reduce performance for Ethernet. You should run some tests to see. You can do this as simply as drag and dropping large (100MB+ files).

Jumbo frames don't improve wireless performance.

 

[speedingcheetah]

For best performance, both wired adapters should be the same. Each NIC card differs in its exact handling of jumbo frames. Results vary if you are using different NICS and devices that support different Jumbo frame values.

You can test jumbo frame support by a special ping.

http://www.faqoverflow.com/serverfault/234311.html

Jumbo frames do not affect wireless. Max frame is 1472 in my test on wifi devices.

Also, there is much debate on weather or not Jumbo frames actualy gives any real world performance increase. This page is quite technical about test it. http://www.boche.net/blog/index.php/2011/01/24/jumbo-frames-comparison-testing-with-ip-storage-and-vmotion/

I have tested jumbo frames both when I used my N56U and now my AC56U...(having tweaked and ping tested each of my desktops NIC cards) and I can get maybe 5MB's increase in transfer speeds between my desktops. Setting jumbo frames on my FreeNAS system actually makes transfers slower to and from it.

I do not recommenced QOS, as it always seems to degrade overall performance and disable features that I want to make use of. It all depends on your usage. Also, it won't make your actual WAN speed (ISP connection speed) any faster. If you are already using all available WAN bandwidth, then QOS may help to better manage usage.

Having HW accl on is always better overall....however, if your environment is always extremely heavy with traffic, then having QOS rules defined may help sort things things out and give you a better overall experience to items given higher priority. Personally, I think the router is plenty powerful enough to handle everything without the help of QOS.

 

[llc00ljoel]

any idea what is the max size jumbo frames an AC56 or AC68 can pass? 4k? 9k?

 

[speedingcheetah]

any idea what is the max size jumbo frames an AC56 or AC68 can pass? 4k? 9k?

the standard for jumbo frames is max 9k. (current devices, older ones may only do 4 or 6k)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumbo_frame

I have tested and confirmed that my AC56U handles 9k fine.

 

[jathor]

hey thanks a lot speedingcheetah, super informative and really helpful, i'll hopefully be testing my setup this weekend, we'll see what comes out from it all.

 

[KGB7]

There is really no longer use for jumbo frames since CPU's are now so much faster in todays routers and on NIC's, switches. Only in a very rare situation and very specific hardware will you see improvement with jumbo frames, but even improvement will be very tiny.

 

[speedingcheetah]

There is really no longer use for jumbo frames since CPU's are now so much faster in todays routers and on NIC's, switches. Only in a very rare situation and very specific hardware will you see improvement with jumbo frames, but even improvement will be very tiny.

I would say to test it among your devices on your own network first. I have recently been doing just that and I do see a noticeable improvement on certain wired devices, newer and older.

With today's network adapter and processor bus designs, jumbo frames may not help and may reduce performance for Ethernet. You should run some tests to see. You can do this as simply as drag and dropping large (100MB+ files).

I would say around 1GB files...anything around 100-300MB or so, transfers to fast to really see sustained throughput.

 

[RMerlin]

Last time I played with Jumbo Frames between my PC and my HTPC (which is an Atom D525), I did see a measurable improvement in SMB throughput (over 10%). However getting Jumbo Frames to work reliably was such a headache that in the end I decided it wasn't worth the trouble, and reverted back to standard packet sizes.

 

[jathor]

Thanks a lot everyone, all this info is quite helpful, since it's a long weekend i think I'll play arounda bit and see what's best for my network. Happy Easter everyone

 

[doubleroll]

I see an improvement with jumbo frames between a readynas nv+ and my win8.1 pc. I have a rt-ac66r currently and jumbo is enabled on all adapters and ports. All routers that I have with jumbo support show the same improvement.