QoS Slowdown

[pmerrill]

I've setup my QoS to enable watching streaming movies without buffering as well as enabling gaming (with ACC on). I note that the max speed of my connection (up/down) without any router in place is 1193/100273 kbps (I'm on cable). With the router in place with no QoS is 1100/72000 kbps and with QoS turned on is 1050/35718.

Given the fact that the up speed does not vary that much it appears my Tp-Link WDR-4300 is running out of grunt. The 560MHz CPU just can't keep up processing packets.

Questions...

1. Are there any tricks for improving the throughput? Overclock?
2. Given the raw speed of my connection, does anyone have a better suggested router, one that can keep up but can also run Gargoyle?

I know I could use stock because it has hardware routing but UGH. I don't know if I can bring myself to do it.

Thanks for any tips and tricks.

[Lantis]

You've basically answered yourself there mate. A mild overclock will help but not that much.
A faster router will but you'll be paying premium $ for them.
My best guess is a wrt1900ac with its dual core 1.2ghz processor. I'm running one but I unfortunately can't saturate the link (I'm on 18000d/900u) so I can't tell you how it will perform.

[tapper]

overclocking for routers with the AR9344 SoC.
http://aspiregemstone.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... r4300.html

THIS IS VERY RISKY!


I have my wdr 3600 overclocked to 720 MHZ on the cpu.
I have a spare router or 2 so i did not mind taking the risk.

One more thing you can tri is disable active congestion control (Download Direction)
my qos is ok with out it as my speeds stay steady.

[pmerrill]

Thanks, disabling ACC improved the speed to 50000 kbps, so not too bad.

I know that gargoyle uses software nat but the 4300 using stock has a hardware nat option that I don't think is used by Gargoyle nor OpenWRT.

Any chance that could be implemented and would it make a difference?

[Lantis]

basically zero chance sorry.

https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/11779

basically the implementation is too broken/messy to even attempt. Which just causes arguments between devs/users.

It may happen eventually but i don't think it is even on the development radar currently.

[pmerrill]

basically zero chance sorry.

https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/11779

basically the implementation is too broken/messy to even attempt. Which just causes arguments between devs/users.

It may happen eventually but i don't think it is even on the development radar currently.

An interesting thread to read, quite a bit of misdirected passion there. Overall it does raise a few interesting questions/observations. Given the invention of high speed mobile chips (> 1.5 GHz) of late and custom silicon (ASIC, PALs). One would think that some bright spark (or company) would produce a very fast router at a relatively cheap price. The fact that relatively new routers only have a 720MHz chip when one can get a 1.5GHz ARM pretty cheaply is a curiosity. If one could combine a switch and router made from a Raspberry Pi (running Gargoyle of course), then technically it would be faster than my 4300. The Pi 2 runs at 900MHz, which is faster than the Archer C7.

[pmerrill]

Another thought. What's some alternatives to the standard QoS rules? I *think* that the more rules one has, the slower the throughput will be so minimising the number of rules may increase the overall speed.

Effectively, I have a few types of devices on my network:

• VoIP box at a particular IP
• A particular PC that runs games
• A particular PC that runs Netflix
• A particular tablet that runs Netflix

I'm thinking why bother with the default rules, select these PCs out for special mention in the QoS and then assign everything else to Slow. I'll give it a try and report back.

[Lantis]

I've actually considered building myself an x86 box just for fun. But until I have high speed bandwidth the cost isn't justifiable. It would just be an experiment. Pretty sure people have pushed gigabit speeds through a PC setup.


Let us know how you go with your testing.

[pmerrill]

Still investigating but one curious behaviour. I changed the rules and rebooted. I then ran speedtest.net. The very first time I ran it (with no one else on the network) I got like 80Mbps!!! The second and subsequent times I ran it I got 40Mbps. Not sure exactly what was causing the problem there???

A x86 router may be the go. I have an old PC with an Intel CPU onboard (no fan). The box only uses 18W so not a heavy drain on power either. I'm thinking I could setup a pretty nifty box to run Gargoyle.

Question is, can I get Gargoyle to run on a PC easily?

[Lantis]

It has been done before.
There's actually a request in my thread to produce an x86 image. It's like number 2 or 3 in the queue though.
I'll let you know if it works.