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Protip: Bufferbloat and how to deal with it in OpenWrt (openwrt.org)

submitted 8 months ago by trompete@hexbear.net to c/technology@hexbear.net

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So... you've probably noticed that when downloading a game or doing serious p2p piracy, your internet latency suffers: websites take longer to load, video chats stutter, online games glitch.

Well, good news! You can do something about that if you have a router capable of running the free OpenWrt firmware.

The problem of downloads (or uploads) clogging up the pipes is called bufferbloat. Basically, there's a traffic jam somewhere, usually where your ISP throttles your internet speed. This means data packets have to queue up behind whatever data is clogging up the pipes, and so they get delivered with a noticeable latency.

Some boffins have looked at that and identified ways to improve the situation:

Have shorter buffers, so stuff cannot queue up as much.
Create express lanes where other traffic can skip the queue of Final Fantasy asset deliveries.
Tell the Final Fantasy asset delivery service to slow the fuck down.

Unfortunately, the queuing policy and the size of the buffers coming into your home is controlled by the ISP, so you can't really do much about that, but you can actually do #3.

This works by setting a speed limit on the OpenWrt router in your home, which tells anyone sending too much shit your way to slow down, which means the buffer on the ISPs side never get full, and therefore no traffic jam! You won't even notice you're downloading Final Fantasy. The web browsing and video chatting will feel like there's no download going on at all. You got to set the bandwidth limit 10-20% below your actual internet speed though, which I think is well worth it.

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/traffic-shaping/sqm

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[–] trompete@hexbear.net 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I have a cudy (which came with an openwrt derived firmware) that cost about 30 € and has enough CPU to do this SQM traffic shaping (at 100 Mbit/s), but I had to buy a modem separately. I could have (ab)used my ISPs router as a quasi-modem, but the firmware had a bug that prevented IPv6 from working correctly when daisy-chaining routers, which would have actually been fixed by an update if my ISP had allowed me to actually update the firmware myself. So another 40 € for a modem.

If you want to buy an OpenWrt-capable router, my advice is to go to Amazon (or whatever) and check for OpenWrt compatibility in the reviews and then double-check on openwrt.org. Models that are available change all the time, and differ by region, so I cannot recommend any specific product.