pfSense Router Tuning v2.4.4

Mike-VA3MW

Tim brought this to  my attention, so thanks to him for taking the time.

If you are using a pfSense router, there is now a much better way to tune the router for bufferbloat issues.    

You must updated your pfSense router to 2.4.4 in order for this to work.

After doing this, it took me about 15 minutes to tune my router using www.dslreports.com/speedtest so that I was routinely seeing A to A+'s for bufferbloat when the best I could do was maybe B's.   

In my case, change the Q size up and down made a difference.  For my 200mb/sec / 15mb/sec cable line, the numbers are about 2000 for WanDown and 900 for WanUp.  This is discussed in the video.

Now, I just need to do the update on the remote end, but I will not do that remotely in case it fails.  You know, Murphy was an optimist.  

For general surfing, I noticed that the initial loads on just about any web page were much faster too especially on email fetches on my iPad.

If you are using pfSense, this should help you out.  Your other option still continues to be the IQRouter you can order from Amazon.  

Mike va3mw


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXqExAALzR8

K5CG

Thank you!

K1DBO

Mike-VA3MW

Excellent points Don

And, like you, more than once have I been bitten by my own traffic limiter.   I also had to rewind in several places.  

It has been 3 days now and my day to day internet operation is now much snappier and I continue to get solid A's and A+'s now.

I will now keep an eye on my RTT (which is different than Ping readings) and see if the average is consistently improved.   I only use SmartLink now when I operate HF.

Very glad I did this upgrade.

Mike

Phil - AA4MY

Mike-VA3MW

Hi Phil

The first question I have that maybe you can help with is how can users can tell if they are DOCSIS 3.1?  How do they get it?

Does it directly address issues with Bufferbloat?

Thanks, Mike va3mw

Phil - AA4MY

Mike-VA3MW

Hi Phil

Not so true in Canada.  The average normal speed for over 80% is 10mb/sec.  Canada is so vast that ISP's are reluctant to change out old hardware due to cost.

I live in Toronto with 11 million people in the area.  The best DSL I can get is 10mb/sec down and 3 mb/sec up.

For cable, slightly better, but no such thing as Gigabit connections.  I do have 200 down and 20 up on Cable and with the above tuning on the latest modem available from Rogers, my bufferbloat numbers are in the C to F range.  After the above tuning, it is much much better.

The IQRouter which is an excellent off the shelf solution also brought that up to an A when when I was testing it.  If I default back to their modem/router, performance is ugly.  That is why I now have it in Bridge mode.

Mike