QoS (Quality of Service) Questions on an ASUS RT‑AC3200 - Does QoS actually work?

[supermut555]

Hello All,

I've searched a number of threads regarding QoS (Quality of Service) configurations and still cannot find the answers I'm looking for.

Provider: Spectrum (Time Warner)
Service: 100Mbps Down/10Mbps Up
Network Router: Asus RT-AC3200
Cable Modem: Zoom 5341 DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem 5341J (Max 343Mbps Down / Max 143 Mbps Up)
Devices Connected: 10 - 20 at one time, dependent on type of day. All Wireless. (See Rough Estimate List)

• 
  Chromecasts - 3x
  WiFi Thermostat - 1x
  Desktop - 1x
  Laptops - 4x
  VoIP - 1x
  Smart Phones - 4x

Primary Use for Internet: (Ordered Top to Low)
Online Gaming
VoIP for Business
Video Streaming

Issue:
I've tried configuring Asus's QoS service on multiple occasions. They have three settings.

• 
  Adaptive - Supposedly adapts to the service i.e. Gaming versus Streaming. That is requiring the most bandwidth at the time.
  Traditional 1 - Setting specific devices to a bandwidth allocation based on percentage.
  Traditional 2 - Setting specific devices to a bandwidth cap.

I've tested and the adaptive, traditional, and traditional 2 settings on multiple occasions and it seems like the QoS does not do very much. The big issue I've been having is when I play online games my roommates are streaming YouTube and Netflix, which causes the downstream allocation to spike. Therefore, causing in game lag (it's the worst on those clutch moments and you end up warping around the map). I personally only need very little bandwidth as a permanent allocation in order to play games.

Are there any alternatives to QoS or am I not configuring it correctly? I follow all the instructions Asus asks when inputting and it seems like when I test QoS on Speedtest.com it doesn't limit anything.

The test I ran was to limit my own personal desktop computer and the entire bandwidth was still being allotted to my machine. Am I doing something wrong here or does QoS not really work?

From the few other forum posts I read, QoS does nothing for downstream data and works mostly just for upstream. Is this true?

Thanks for the help again.

 

[bill001g]

First you have to remember QoS is a very advanced network topic. It requires a lot of understanding of how data is really sent at the packet level. This is in addition to good understanding of basic stuff like ip addresses and subnet masks.

The largest issue you have is you can't really do true QoS on download traffic. The ISP is in full control. If the connection to your house is full and they decide to drop your game traffic and send netflix traffic there is nothing your router can do, it not like it can magically recreate the game traffic and drop netflix instead.

What QoS does is attempt to trick the end device into requesting less data from the server. It does this by dropping even more traffic than the ISP did in hopes the end station will respond. A common one is at the application level for example youtube will cut the resolution if it detects too many errors. Now this is also done at a much deeper level in the tcp stack related to tcp window size but that is to complex to explain.

It only works to a point but there is really nothing you can do if the server keeps sending data. Torrent tends to be the worst offender but even a game program send at a fixed rate and you can not reduce it even if you wanted to.

Asus has pretty strong QoS compared to many routers. This is one area they constantly change so I can not give you exact examples.

You goal is not to try to guarantee a device bandwidth because that you can not do what you need to attempt to do is limit the bad device so you leave enough unused for the good device.

Lets say in a simple case you have 2 machines and you game machine need 1mbps and you have 10mbps. You would limit the bad machine to say 7mbps. You must limit it much lower than the actual rate because network rates are averages and you can still get burst. This should leave 3mbps more or less unused for the game machine.

It should be possible to see this on speed test. It is easy to limit the upload rates since that you really do have full QoS control.

In most cases the problem with the QoS is understanding the direction the traffic is going. Upload traffic you are limiting the source ip download traffic you are limiting the destination ip.

It does work sorta ok it just take messing with it. Start very simple and add. Likely what you will end up doing is putting you ip in a group and place no rules for it. You will then limit the default group which include all the other ip to some fixed value for all of them combined. Still I would first test limiting just 1 ip address.

 

[supermut555]

Hi Bill,

Thank you for your detailed answer. Last night I sat on the phone with my ISP provider's technical service for an hour. They did the usual crap. Turn your modem off and on, change the router's channels to less occupied channels, they did a ping test to see if my router was the issue. All of the results netted in no solution.

I also ran a ping test from my desktop this morning over the wireless network and over 201 packets there was 0 packet loss and the average trip time was pretty quick at 3ms with a max of 122 ms.

The bright light is that I did ask them to send a technician over to move my router into the room where my primary desktop computer is. Basically, I'm going hard wired at this point.

I do have one fear. Even if I go hard wired I feel that high bandwidth use services like Netflix, Youtube, iTunes will still cause the same issues. If this does happen, I have been doing some research on going the QoS route using Tomato QoS. Would this be something that is viable? If it is viable is there a place I can start? I'm almost at the point where I feel like I have to become a network amateur to ensure that people in my household are getting their fair share of the internet utility.

 

[bill001g]

Third party firmware has many options. I have not used tomato for a couple years so I don't know what they added but they are all based on the IPTABLES file so if the gui does not have the feature it can be done at the command line level.

The largest issue with QoS when you are dealing with other people is getting a agreement who is more important. It is extremely hard to get something that works well and still limits the way you need. The best solution is to get more bandwidth but that is not a option many times

 

[IvanUskov]

Hi all,

To get working QoS it is necessary to turn off the "NAT Acceleration" optionon the LAN/"Switch Control" tab. The firmware is latest by ASUS (3.0.0.4.380.7743). Please try.

 

[bill001g]

Hi all,

To get working QoS it is necessary to turn off the "NAT Acceleration" optionon the LAN/"Switch Control" tab. The firmware is latest by ASUS (3.0.0.4.380.7743). Please try.

Turning off nat acceleration is a huge performance penalty if you have a fast internet connection. Many routers will not pass much over 200mbps with it off but can do 1gbit with it on. Then again a lot of the third party firmware does not have nat acceleration anyway because they can not get the driver from the chipset manufacture that has the option to use the acceration.

 

[IvanUskov]

Turning off nat acceleration is a huge performance penalty if you have a fast internet connection. Many routers will not pass much over 200mbps with it off but can do 1gbit with it on. Then again a lot of the third party firmware does not have nat acceleration anyway because they can not get the driver from the chipset manufacture that has the option to use the acceration.

Initial question was exactly about quite powerful AC3200 and 100 mbit connection. The NAT acceleration does present in official firmware, moreover the built-in help of "nat acceleration" item directly says that QoS will NOT work if NAT acceleration is enabled. So each owner should to make own choice what is more important: working QoS services or true 1 Gbit link to provider. For 100 mbit uplink there is no visible penalty.