Question Packet loss with new optic fiber connection ?

[User1990]

2 people updating Call of Duty is all it takes to saturate gigabit internet. It all depends on how many people are in your house and what they're doing. If all the other people in the home and just streaming netflix, youtube, tiktok etc.... then you won't have any issues. If you have 3 roommates with playstations, all downloading call of duty on launch day, you'll saturate gigabit and get lag. You can set steam, xbox or playstation to limit download speeds, but unless you have full control over everyone's pc's and consoles, then it's hard to enforce. It's better to have a more robust router to handle any situation.

Packet loss can happen with both download and upload. I used to play alot of Rainbow 6 Siege, it tells you on screen if the lag is on the server side or the client side. It's what led me down the rabbit hole or researching better router traffic shaping algorithms and ultimately building my own router. Making your own router is no different than building your own PC. You just have to add an extra 2 ethernet ports.

I do wonder why my ping went from a completely straight line to having a bit of "jitter".
It's literally so small that it doesn't affect the gameplay most likely.

I don't feel like I'm having any issues but it's something that wasn't happening before and I don't believe the previous router had better processing power.
It's more like curiosity on my side, could just be my ISP honestly.

 

[gggplaya]

I do wonder why my ping went from a completely straight line to having a bit of "jitter".
It's literally so small that it doesn't affect the gameplay most likely.

I don't feel like I'm having any issues but it's something that wasn't happening before and I don't believe the previous router had better processing power.
It's more like curiosity on my side, could just be my ISP honestly.

Oh here we go, your curiosity has now led you down the same rabbit hole I went into. Bufferbloat causes packet loss and jitter. Your's is mild but if you're getting jitter than you have a little buffer bloat.

Run this Bufferbloat test: https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat

What this test does is check latency with no load on your network(make sure nothing else is downloading or uploading on your network). Then it adds a load to your network and checks latency again. If latency increases while loaded, then you have bufferbloat.

The recommended routers are outdated, they're fine for traffic shaping slower connections like 300mbps internet. But above that, the ARM processors struggle to run the traffic shaping algorithms like CAKE or FQ_Codel.

That's why I built my own router from old computer parts I already had and loaded it with OpenWRT. I run the cake algorithm.

However, if you want to just buy a router, I would get the Zimaboard for $90 and load it with OpenWRT. The processor is respectable enough to traffic shape gigabit internet. You don't need a buy a hard drive, I run OpenWRT from a nano usb drive. It still boots up in less than 20 seconds from the usb drive.

Here's a video of someone that tested the Zimaboard:

View: https://youtu.be/htOHVt9rTXE?si=NW7FFqnSSEC9w_Cg&t=233

At 3:39 in the video, you can see download is fine, but when it starts uploading you can see the ping jump from <1ms up to 26ms and sustain that during the upload. That's bufferbloat. At 3:52 in the video, he turns on CAKE and that bufferbloat goes away. It maintains <1ms for download and only jumps up slightly to 2-4ms for upload.

 

[User1990]

Oh here we go, your curiosity has now led you down the same rabbit hole I went into. Bufferbloat causes packet loss and jitter. Your's is mild but if you're getting jitter than you have a little buffer bloat.

Run this Bufferbloat test: https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat

What this test does is check latency with no load on your network(make sure nothing else is downloading or uploading on your network). Then it adds a load to your network and checks latency again. If latency increases while loaded, then you have bufferbloat.

The recommended routers are outdated, they're fine for traffic shaping slower connections like 300mbps internet. But above that, the ARM processors struggle to run the traffic shaping algorithms like CAKE or FQ_Codel.

That's why I built my own router from old computer parts I already had and loaded it with OpenWRT. I run the cake algorithm.

However, if you want to just buy a router, I would get the Zimaboard for $90 and load it with OpenWRT. The processor is respectable enough to traffic shape gigabit internet. You don't need a buy a hard drive, I run OpenWRT from a nano usb drive. It still boots up in less than 20 seconds from the usb drive.

Here's a video of someone that tested the Zimaboard:

View: https://youtu.be/htOHVt9rTXE?si=NW7FFqnSSEC9w_Cg&t=233

At 3:39 in the video, you can see download is fine, but when it starts uploading you can see the ping jump from <1ms up to 26ms and sustain that during the upload. That's bufferbloat. At 3:52 in the video, he turns on CAKE and that bufferbloat goes away. It maintains <1ms for download and only jumps up slightly to 2-4ms for upload.

I cannot run bufferbloat test ever since I have my 1gbps connection, it just says warming up forever.
I've used SQM/etc in the past and I loved it, that's why I first bought this edgerouter but cannot use it due to not supporting speeds of 1gbps right now.

But the funny part is that I have these "spikes" under 0 load. I'm alone at home.
Probably an issue with my ISP the past days ?
Dunno, I'm also running exit lag 24/7 because they haven't fixed their pathing to riot yet.

 

[gggplaya]

It does says warming up for a long time. Try waiting 10 minutes.

 

[User1990]

It does says warming up for a long time. Try waiting 10 minutes.

Ok it did run, so +16 on download +2 on upload.
Could in any case (bufferbloat aside), my edgerouter could be causing me issues?
I've been seeing the spikes ever since I bridged it onto the modem, but could also be bad timing I guess.

EDIT : So I reseted the modem and closed wi-fi,firewall again. It felt insanely better first game in. Dunno.

Should probably upgrade my edgerouter sometime soon.
What "affordable" router would you recommend, if I don't build my own?
I mainly stream and game at a high level, that's the only thing I care about atm.

 

[gggplaya]

+16 and +2 are tolerable. Any router not running traffic shaping will have bloat. The bloat only happens while the router is running near full load anyways, you should be fine as long as your roommates aren't downloading or uploading anything crazy.

Personally, I would buy the Zimaboard and use DDWRT or OpenWRT with CAKE. Once you get it set up, you'll never have to worry about your internet or client side lag during gaming.

 

[User1990]

+16 and +2 are tolerable. Any router not running traffic shaping will have bloat. The bloat only happens while the router is running near full load anyways, you should be fine as long as your roommates aren't downloading or uploading anything crazy.

Personally, I would buy the Zimaboard and use DDWRT or OpenWRT with CAKE. Once you get it set up, you'll never have to worry about your internet or client side lag during gaming.

Is there a version with 4-5 ethernet ports or do you add extra via the pcie slot ?

 

[gggplaya]

Is there a version with 4-5 ethernet ports or do you add extra via the pcie slot ?

You can just add a cheap unmanaged gigabit switch to the LAN port if you want to add more ethernet ports.

 

[User1990]

You can just add a cheap unmanaged gigabit switch to the LAN port if you want to add more ethernet ports.

Thanks, so I went back to the main router to see if it would make any difference since the spikes started when I bridged.
It made 0 difference.
What I found out was than when pinging to google or cloudflare I have 5-10% loss to my own gateway(2 hop).
I have 0% loss to it when I directly ping to it tho, weird.
Again, my jitter isn't something that ruins/affects my gameplay much but it is still weird whatsoever.

EDIT : I solved it. VANGUARD was the culprit. Normal priority created huge jitter and below normal solves it.