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[GigabitEthernet]

I'm using pfSense with QoS and no buffer bloat at all.  Get an A and A rating on Thinkbroadband for buffer bloat, not so when QoS is turned off.

It should be possible to use QoS on the router to remove buffer bloat, just depends on the routher.

Can you tell me more about your setup?

I am planning to get one of those X86 mini boxes and just run OpenWrt or pfSense on that

[Alex Atkin UK]

Can you tell me more about your setup?

I am planning to get one of those X86 mini boxes and just run OpenWrt or pfSense on that

You just follow the QoS Wizard and input your up/down bandwidth (as reported from a speed test).  You can then disable the download queue which is assigned to the LAN.

[GigabitEthernet]

You just follow the QoS Wizard and input your up/down bandwidth (as reported from a speed test).  You can then disable the download queue which is assigned to the LAN.

Thanks mate, do you have any recommendations for a cheap-ish X86 box?

[Alex Atkin UK]

The one I use: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004254089060.html

You only need the lowest specification one, although it might be cheaper to get it without SSD and RAM (to buy better brands within the UK) I bought mine with it included.

The only caveat is getting a better PSU might be worth it as the random Chinese ones tend to be inefficient.

[GigabitEthernet]

The one I use: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004254089060.html

You only need the lowest specification one, although it might be cheaper to get it without SSD and RAM (to buy better brands within the UK) I bought mine with it included.

The only caveat is getting a better PSU might be worth it as the random Chinese ones tend to be inefficient.

That is the one I was looking at. And this will cope with a Gigabit if I ever need to go there?

[XGS_Is_On]

For those on a gigabit seeing relatively high bloat some of it is potentially coming from maxing out the link between ONT and router.

On 500 high bloat is disappointing. The OLT should be doing the heavy lifting mitigating the bloat.

From tests I can confirm that bloat running a gig on a gig between ONT and router is way higher than not maxing it out. This may well not be a thing on BT Wholesale or TalkTalk Wholesale at least where another limit is placed on the traffic outbound from ISP to home - that leaves potential to avoid bloat due to local congestion but add it due to the shaping further up.

The PON later itself does a good job. Very minimal buffer bloat running at full speed with no other limitation than between OLT and ONT.

[Alex Atkin UK]

For those on a gigabit seeing relatively high bloat some of it is potentially coming from maxing out the link between ONT and router.

On 500 high bloat is disappointing. The OLT should be doing the heavy lifting mitigating the bloat.

Obviously its possible if traffic is somehow coming onto the ONT quicker than it can deliver it to the router.  However this does not seem to be the case on my connection, I do not get above 915Mbit when the link to the ONT should do more like 940Mbit.  The cap (and as such bloat reduction) should happen at the ISP where the speed limit cap is imposed, they do not want to deliver traffic down the backhaul that cannot be delivered.

Upstream bloat will happen on the router or ONT, depending on if either is buffering excess traffic.

The only way to solve upstream bloat is to NOT buffer the traffic at all, drop any traffic that surpasses the upstream limit and ideally prioritise time-sensitive traffic so that never gets dropped at all.

That is the one I was looking at. And this will cope with a Gigabit if I ever need to go there?

The reviews I looked at before buying one showed it doing NAT at the full 2.5Gbit.  I've had it load balance at 1.44Gbit between FTTP and 5G.  I've only seen it CPU bound on OpenVPN, where it honestly doesn't matter to me that it doesn't reach Gigabit.  The beauty of this being a newer CPU is it uses very little electricity compared to my slightly faster, much older model 7200U, probably about half as much actually.

[bogof]

I'd be interested to know where the 915mbps comes in.  I also saw my (pre-migration ) Zen throughput capped at roughly this, though I have on more than one occasion seen posts from folk achieving much closer to the 940mbps theoretical max.

[XGS_Is_On]

The only way to solve upstream bloat is to NOT buffer the traffic at all, drop any traffic that surpasses the upstream limit and ideally prioritise time-sensitive traffic so that never gets dropped at all.

Unfortunately not possible. Microbursts happen and some buffering is necessary to preserve quality of experience. Also PON is a shared media and the ONT needs to hold data briefly until it has enough timeslots to transmit it. On a busy PON this can take a while and throughput will be very broken if nothing is buffered.

[meritez]

I'm looking at this for FTTP, two 2.5 ports:
https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=287

[GigabitEthernet]

I'm a bit confused, bufferbloat can't be resolved on the upstream, why is there so much about setting an upstream limit?

[j0hn]

I think you can buy all the fancy routers in the world and you're still going to see the same bufferbloat.

I'm with Talktalk residential on the 550/75 package and I get quite bad bufferbloat.
pfsense, openwrt or an Asus RT-AX86U made zero difference.

Bufferbloat wasn't as bad on BT FTTP 550/75 package so I'm putting it down to how Talktalk handle the traffic.

My contract is up in January and I'm going to try Sky on the giga package and see how that compares.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Unfortunately not possible. Microbursts happen and some buffering is necessary to preserve quality of experience. Also PON is a shared media and the ONT needs to hold data briefly until it has enough timeslots to transmit it. On a busy PON this can take a while and throughput will be very broken if nothing is buffered.

Yes, I probably should have been more accurate in saying keeping the buffer to a minimum, so much as possible for the given medium.

I'd assume time slots would be fairly consistent so if you prioritise time-sensitive traffic its more likely to go through within the time allotted so only the less important traffic sits in the buffer waiting for later time slots.  Given you're unlikely to have 30 customers all trying to push 115Mbit at the same time, on OR you're rather unlikely to hit contention for upstream.

I'm with Talktalk residential on the 550/75 package and I get quite bad bufferbloat.

That's disconcerting, as it kinda implies the backhaul is congested or poorly configured somehow.  If the capacity is there, it makes zero sense to hold packets in the buffer for longer than absolutely necessary.

[GigabitEthernet]

Sorry Alex but I thought bufferbloat had nothing to do with provider. I’m with TalkTalk on 500 too

[Alex Atkin UK]

Sorry Alex but I thought bufferbloat had nothing to do with provider. I’m with TalkTalk on 500 too

On a provider managing their end of the network well with effectively no real-world contention (beyond the time slots on FTTP for example), then it should be.  If you hit contention anywhere of course, all bets are off.

I'd expect it to have become less of an issue over the years too as the networks have gotten better at capping your line profile slightly below your line rate.  Of course, that can still depend on what size buffer they have on their routers, but in general I'd expect it to be as low as possible to avoid wasting memory and bandwidth.

For really really tweaking it at the users end, I believe even reducing the txqueuelen on the NIC can have some benefits, but you may end up trading bandwidth - maybe increasing CPU utilisation on the router?  I'm not entirely sure on that one.