Getting read for SmartLink -- test your upload performance

Mike,

Thanks for opening this thread on remote ops, Internet service issues and bufferbloat.  I wanted to share my experience with Spectrum/TWC service and a Netgear R7800 X4S gaming router. 

First, the router was originally configured with Quality of Service (QoS) enabled with automatic default bandwidth settings (about 40 mbps download and 6 mbps upload). I was typically getting grade "F" or "D" for bufferfloat by the dslreports.com speed test.  Average speeds were just a little less than the default QoS bandwidth settings.  

Second, I had read several reports on router forums that manually lowering the automatic bandwidth setting for QoS would reduce bufferfloat.  After some experimentation with these settings, I found that manually reducing the default settings by about 25% resulted in a good balance between bufferfloat and average speed. The dslreports.com test reported bufferfloat had improved to grade "B" on average with improvement particularly large with downloads.  This helped mitigate Spectrum's evil dynamic buffering and throttling, cutting peak latency by more than half. 

Despite the previously poor bufferbloat condition, I've still had excellent results operating remote over VPN (OpenVPN and SoftEther), seldom experiencing dropouts, including a full month of daily sessions from California to Maine. However, I hope this improvement in bufferfloat latency will help in the future when network conditions are marginal. 

Thanks again for your post -- I would have otherwise not investigated this issue. 

73,
Larry KB1VFU