Looking for help buying an sqm Router with performance to almost 500mbit connection

[drinkingbird]

I have tested my latency on speedtest, dslreports and waveform.com. My tests are using ethernet cat 8 cable. All showed the exact same results which i mentioned earlier. I have fiber to the home which is then connected to ont and then to my isp router (Speedport 2)

All of those tests will saturate your connection and tell you the latency while it is saturated, which will always be high. What is the latency on speedtest.net BEFORE the test starts? That's your true latency and unless you plan to saturate your connection all the time, the other latency numbers are meaningless, that's what happens when you hit 100%, latency spikes up.

QOS will actually introduce latency vs. a wide open connection. Adding bandwidth is the better solution for improving latency (as well as avoiding DSL). My guess is your 10M upload is your main issue and increasing that will help a lot. 50 upload will probably eliminate the need for any QOS (unless you are also sending large file transfers at the same time you're gaming). But even if you need QOS, just about any Asus router can do QOS on 50M upload (don't apply it to download at all) without issue.

 

[drinkingbird]

Kind of a noob. Could you please explain what i need to do? Here is my results on speedtest. My latency is measured while it downloads or uploads if i am not mistaken(so this is exactly like downloading a torrent while it is pinging) but i might be wrong.

The latency on the left (3msec) is your true latency. That is a perfectly good (actually very good) number.

If you are torrenting while gaming, you're going to have problems no matter what. QOS can only do so much. It will help, but you will have higher latency than if you had available capacity on your connection. The solution is to pause your torrents while you're gaming, not introduce processing and delays in order to try and prioritize one over the other. Or just go into your torrent client and set your max upload and download speed to 1/2 of your connection speed (or even less). That way you're doing QOS on the torrent client itself and not impacting the router, leaving your gaming with the best latency.

 

[Furious]

I found what you meant by tracert command and i did it to 8.8.8.8 which is google. If you think i should do it to a different address please tell me.Here are the results.

 

[drinkingbird]

I found what you meant by tracert command and i did it to 8.8.8.8 which is google. If you think i should do it to a different address please tell me.Here are the results.
View attachment 53617

That latency is perfect.

 

[Furious]

I am not torrenting while gaming for sure. But i have 2-3 other people playing browser games or playing with instagram- browsing- youtubing. I noticed that my upload latency using a nighthawk 1000xr dropped to 60-80 but i was really disatisfied of their netduma interface. That is why i hoped asuswrt merlin provides the same algorithm- sqm cake or codel that would fix my bufferbloat issues so that when my connection is used by anyone of the others my games have absolute priority and my latency-ping stays absolutuly stable below 40.

I am in a road where i need to make a pick from many options. And i need your help.

I heard about a router from Ubiquity edge router 4 which supposedly fixes it for everyone (but offers no wifi so i would have to still use my isp one for that which probably means that qos wont work for the wifi connected people-correct me if i am wrong) as this code available even though it is not supported well and i hate this company for a terrible access point that i bought from them so my experience says not to get it.
Netgear Nighthawk 1000xr failed miserably for me
Eero Pro 6 which claims to do everything out of the box but i dont really like.
An asus router which supports Asuswrt Merlin(which i heard offers the Cake or Codel SQM that i need).

 

[Furious]

That latency is perfect.

Then why i get 500 when my upload is used, and when i check my bufferbloat on all sites i get an F grade. That is bufferbloat that i am trying to fix isnt it? In my games i have delay.

 

[Tech9]

In my games i have delay.

This may be completely unrelated to your Internet connection.

That is bufferbloat that i am trying to fix isnt it?

Seems like you don't read or understand the answers above. There is very little to "fix" with your router.

 

[drinkingbird]

Then why i get 500 when my upload is used, and when i check my bufferbloat on all sites i get an F grade. That is bufferbloat that i am trying to fix isnt it? In my games i have delay.

Ignore bufferbloat tests. If you get a "good" grade all that means is you're not able to saturate your internet connection. Bufferbloat is fairly meaningless as long as you can saturate your connection. Now if you're seeing bufferbloat when you can only hit 50% of your connection speed, something else is going on that you need to fix.

Your 10M upload likely just isn't enough for yourself and the other people doing stuff at the same time. Upgrade to 500/50 and that will probably be sufficient. If not, you can start looking at using QOS (probably just on the upload, 500M download should be plenty for everyone, unless someone is doing file transfers all the time).

You should also look at the latency to the gaming server, it is possible it just is far away and no matter what you do, there is going to be a certain latency you can't get below.

QOS is a mixed bag. Upload direction, you can control it quite well. Download is sort of a "hack" to try and convince a device that there is congestion and hope it throttles back. There are also different types of QOS. Adaptive/packet prioritization is a heavier load on the router and won't work as well as hard limits. Policing/max bandwidth on a device will typically work better and have less load on the router, but that device will always be limited to that amount even when there is available capacity.

A good higher end Asus router should be able to do QOS pretty well, especially if you're just trying to do it on the 50M upload. I'm not sure if any can do adaptive QOS at 500M, but I suspect there should be a few that can, or at least close to it. Ubiquiti and others all use pretty similar implementations (though maybe a bit more polished) but they will also run into hardware limitations just like the Asus.

 

[Furious]

Appreciate your help guys! Is there a way that i can check what my latency is using half of my connection for example instead of full?

 

[drinkingbird]

Appreciate your help guys! Is there a way that i can check what my latency is using half of my connection for example instead of full?

Set your torrent client to 50% of your connection, get some uploads and downloads going, then ping your ISP's gateway or google or whatever. Ping before and after and compare.

I'm assuming they probably make some speed test clients for PC where you can set the speed, or maybe there is a remote iperf server out there that you can use (iperf allows you to set speeds), but it isn't something I've researched, so the torrent scenario is probably easiest.

 

[RMerlin]

That latency is perfect.

I wouldn't say that. That 30 ms jump within the first few ISP hops indicates that the ISP itself is pretty bad, while his connection itself is working properly, with 2 ms - typical for FTTH. At least it doesn't seem to indicate packet losses.

Here's mine:

Tracing route to dns.google [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  stargate.lostrealm.lan [192.168.10.1]
  2     3 ms     2 ms     2 ms  lo0.lns1.mtl3.yul.ebox.ca [198.58.198.32]
  3     2 ms     3 ms     2 ms  901.ae8.er2.mtl3.yul.ebox.ca [96.127.240.133]
  4     7 ms     2 ms     3 ms  142.250.172.194
  5     4 ms     3 ms     4 ms  108.170.251.1
  6     4 ms     2 ms     2 ms  108.170.231.57
  7     3 ms     2 ms     3 ms  dns.google [8.8.8.8]

 

[Moba]

Hmm, have you seen MikroTik RouterOS settings? For someone coming from home AIO router it may be more challenging than setting up OPNsense x86 box by following YouTube videos.

I never claimed that MikroTik made drop-in replacements for consumer routers. I just replied to your statement that x86 is required to maintain 500 Mbps+ throughput with SQM: the choice of SoC is the limitation, not ARM. If encryption or NAS functionality is also required, then ARM becomes much less interesting. In any case, the OP has a lot of things to check before getting a new router because no router can fix bad server latency and magically make packets move faster.

 

[Moba]

Problem is: the routers you mention are as expensive as a x86 box and without wifi, just as an x86 box.
Not to mention the proprietary OS....

See my reply to Tech9. I wasn't trying to compare different platforms. The Dream Machine is actually an AIO Wi-Fi device in the same price range as many Asus routers, but somewhat deprecated since it doesn't support ax or be standards.

 

[drinkingbird]

I wouldn't say that. That 30 ms jump within the first few ISP hops indicates that the ISP itself is pretty bad, while his connection itself is working properly, with 2 ms - typical for FTTH. At least it doesn't seem to indicate packet losses.

Here's mine:

Tracing route to dns.google [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  stargate.lostrealm.lan [192.168.10.1]
  2     3 ms     2 ms     2 ms  lo0.lns1.mtl3.yul.ebox.ca [198.58.198.32]
  3     2 ms     3 ms     2 ms  901.ae8.er2.mtl3.yul.ebox.ca [96.127.240.133]
  4     7 ms     2 ms     3 ms  142.250.172.194
  5     4 ms     3 ms     4 ms  108.170.251.1
  6     4 ms     2 ms     2 ms  108.170.231.57
  7     3 ms     2 ms     3 ms  dns.google [8.8.8.8]

Yeah I mean on their connection, you're not going to do much better, and a speed upgrade or QOS isn't going to do anything for something several hops away on the internet. Could be where they live is just not all that close to a Google DNS server, not really anything that can be done about that other than maybe switching ISPs (and probably wouldn't change anything).

A few more traces to other sites, preferably within the same country, would confirm if there is some sort of choke point or routing issue with the ISP.

 

[Tech9]

I just replied to your statement that x86 is required to maintain 500 Mbps+ throughput with SQM

Agree. You can actually do it with specific Qualcomm based home routers, but again - exception. In general if >500Mbps traffic processing is needed x86 is the better and more common choice. Dream Router and MikroTik products are in exotics category on this forum.

 

[Furious]

I purchased an Asus AX11000 pro so i literally paid the most i could. I like the wifi and read it offers game accelaration out of the box. If that doesnt offer lower pings then i will switch to asuswrt for SQM Cake which is why i pay the extra for it.
I live in Greece maybe that is the reason for my latency issues?

 

[Tech9]

it offers game accelaration out of the box

Mostly marketing targeting gamers. Your end device can't fix ISP issues. Test your luck though.

 

[Moba]

I purchased an Asus AX11000 pro so i literally paid the most i could. I like the wifi and read it offers game accelaration out of the box. If that doesnt offer lower pings then i will switch to asuswrt for SQM Cake which is why i pay the extra for it.
I live in Greece maybe that is the reason for my latency issues?

It's your money, but no router will fix your issues, so unless you need the wireless capabilities, I would return it. I would love to be proven wrong, but no QoS can make packets go faster and there's no such thing as game acceleration - it's misleading marketing from Asus.

On your end, you can only prioritize clients/ports by dropping or delaying other traffic on your LAN. That's it. You have no control on the WAN side, where you have issues at the moment. And QoS adds CPU time - so actually more latency, even if it's negligible.

Ask a neighbour to check their ping/tracert to Google and compare. Then call your ISP. That base 30 ms is nasty and will never get you the low latency gaming you seek.

 

[drinkingbird]

I purchased an Asus AX11000 pro so i literally paid the most i could. I like the wifi and read it offers game accelaration out of the box. If that doesnt offer lower pings then i will switch to asuswrt for SQM Cake which is why i pay the extra for it.
I live in Greece maybe that is the reason for my latency issues?

Start with the upgrade to 500/50, much much much better use of your money.

If you still need QOS, go for a far more reasonably priced router and use as little QOS as possible to accomplish what you want. But sometimes the best QOS is just limiting or coordinating with the people/devices that are doing heavy upload/download.

If you can afford the router you got, it is a very nice router and you by all means can keep it. It is probably way overkill for your internet speed. It absolutely will not accelerate your gaming or make your internet latency magically lower (it can't accelerate the speed of light). The CPU may be able to handle more complex QOS than a cheaper router, but as has been mentioned, you want as little QOS as possible, there are better ways to resolve latency issues in most cases.

Here is a simplified way of looking at it:
-No QOS and not hitting any network limitation - Lowest latency
-QOS while hitting a network limitation (like saturating your speed) - Medium latency and moderate packet loss (higher for some devices than others, that's basically how QOS works, deciding which devices to drop packets from).
-No QOS while hitting a network limitation - highest latency and highest packet loss

 

[drinkingbird]

Ask a neighbour to check their ping/tracert to Google and compare. Then call your ISP. That base 30 ms is nasty and will never get you the low latency gaming you seek.

The 30msec is several hops out from them, which implies their ISP is fine, at least to a certain point. @Furious - ping test/traceroute a few other sites, specifically ones within your country, that will give a better view, if they all hit that 30msec hop, then your ISP may just have a lousy route to the internet backbone, or some other routing problem on their network.