Turn off FA and not CTF?

[jeff3820]

With a AC-68U H/W B1 running 64_2 is there a straightforward way to turn off Flow Acceleration (FA) and still keep Cut-Thru Forwarding (CTF) enabled? I have gigabit service and I normally see CTF + FA on but the FA performance seems buggy. While CPU usage is basically non-existent with FA the performance is inconsistent and choppy. Speedtests with CTF+FA are about 374 dn and 375 up. I know I shouldn't complain but if FA is off and CTF is on then I see 850 (or higher) dn and 380 up. The tests/performance difference is absolutely 100% reproducible. I can turn FA off by turning on Traffic Statistics but I really don't need the Traffic Statistics overhead. Suggestions? Any idea what is causing the FA wierdness...I don't believe I saw this with Asus stock firmware nor earlier versions of Merlin software (~60 or 61).

 

[jeff3820]

nvram set ctf_fa_cap=0

nvram commit

and reboot

I do this on all my AP routers and the 68U

This will still enable CTF?

I've only used the GUI to configure router but am fairly literate...I assume one has to use SSH to access the router with something like Putty? Any command line info on how to do this would be welcome

 

[jeff3820]

Thanks!

 

[jeff3820]

One more question, to return to default setting would it be ctf_fa_cap=2?

Poking around for information on this command 2 appears to be normal; 1 is bypass...not sure what that means.

 

[doczenith1]

Speedtests with CTF+FA are about 374 dn and 375 up. I know I shouldn't complain but if FA is off and CTF is on then I see 850 (or higher) dn and 380 up.

Which speedtest are you running? I had issues with FA on my 68U with 380.4164 but only with the flashed based Ookla test. HTML5 based tests were fine.

 

[jeff3820]

I also saw wierdness with the flash based tests...specifically Ookla and others that use the Ookla engine. The Xfinity flash based test was fine. With the HTML5 engines, Speedtest.dslreports.com used to be OK but as of late all of my browsers seem to choke on that test...however, the AT&T Speedtest test that uses the dslreports engine works great. I do not have flash installed on any of my machines any longer...if I have to use a flash based test I just use Chrome. FYI, if I use a browser without flash, such as Firefox, and go to Speedtest.net I can run their new HTML5 based test that is currently in beta. This test is the best of all the HTML5 based Speedtests. Very fast and consistent. However, if I reactivate FA, then even the HTML5 based tests drop down to about 375 up and down. Turning off FA returns the speed to 850+/380. Something is clearly wrong with the current implementation of FA.

Merlin, can we get a radio button to enable/disable FA in the GUI just below Hardware Acceleration under LAN? This would be real useful until the FA issues are sorted.

 

[Almighty1]

One more question, to return to default setting would it be ctf_fa_cap=2?

Poking around for information on this command 2 appears to be normal; 1 is bypass...not sure what that means.

Where did you actually find info on the command? You have to nvram unset ctf_fa_cap to get it back to the original as that is a key with no variable.

 

[ScooterJM]

Where did you actually find info on the command? You have to nvram unset ctf_fa_cap to get it back to the original as that is a key with no variable.

I am curious about this also - how can you figure out what this command actually does?