Comments on: Clothing may be optional but bufferbloat isn’t

Comments on: Clothing may be optional but bufferbloat isn’t http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt Cringely on technology Sat, 18 May 2013 08:42:46 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Helo http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt#comment-273346 Helo Sun, 02 Dec 2012 20:12:39 +0000 http://www.cringely.com/?p=4858#comment-273346 TEST

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]]> By: test http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt#comment-271134 test Sat, 17 Nov 2012 21:44:20 +0000 http://www.cringely.com/?p=4858#comment-271134 test
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]]> By: Hardware to give IP packets priority | Smash Company http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt#comment-267254 Hardware to give IP packets priority | Smash Company Mon, 29 Oct 2012 13:25:53 +0000 http://www.cringely.com/?p=4858#comment-267254 [...] Damn clever. Let’s use your example – you have a fantastic router with DD-WRT and the best QoS in the world. Your router detects a high #1 priority packet and places it at the top of the egress queue so that the high priority packet immediately exits the router at the “front of the line.” Wonderful! Next, the high priority packet immediately enters the “end of the line” of the modem’s single adaptive rate buffer (ARB). Well, modems have no idea about QoS or prioritization, so your high priority packet must wait in queue behind ALL the previous packets before it exits to the Internet. All packets must wait for their turn – there is no jumping to the front of the line in a modem! Put another way, modems remove any semblance of “prioritization” from packets – all packets are equal in a modem. Democracy in action! That said, the LagBuster solves the modem lag problem by precisely matching the ingress and egress flow rates, and limiting the modem to only one packet in the ARB at any time. Further, with LagBuster’s dual buffer, the high packet priority status is retained. With no other packets in the ARB to cause queuing delays, the LagBuster can always send high priority packets from the high priority buffer at maximum speed. Lastly, the dwell time (“lag”) in the modem is basically proportional to the modem’s buffer size and upstream bandwidth. A consumer grade modem may add up to hundreds of milliseconds of delay to the packet stream. For example, a typical modem buffer is about 300KByte, and a typical upstream speed is about 5Mbps, which can result in as much as 500ms delay for a packet flow. QoS routers cannot ever solve that delay. LagBuster does.” Source [...]

]]> [...] Damn clever. Let’s use your example – you have a fantastic router with DD-WRT and the best QoS in the world. Your router detects a high #1 priority packet and places it at the top of the egress queue so that the high priority packet immediately exits the router at the “front of the line.” Wonderful! Next, the high priority packet immediately enters the “end of the line” of the modem’s single adaptive rate buffer (ARB). Well, modems have no idea about QoS or prioritization, so your high priority packet must wait in queue behind ALL the previous packets before it exits to the Internet. All packets must wait for their turn – there is no jumping to the front of the line in a modem! Put another way, modems remove any semblance of “prioritization” from packets – all packets are equal in a modem. Democracy in action! That said, the LagBuster solves the modem lag problem by precisely matching the ingress and egress flow rates, and limiting the modem to only one packet in the ARB at any time. Further, with LagBuster’s dual buffer, the high packet priority status is retained. With no other packets in the ARB to cause queuing delays, the LagBuster can always send high priority packets from the high priority buffer at maximum speed. Lastly, the dwell time (“lag”) in the modem is basically proportional to the modem’s buffer size and upstream bandwidth. A consumer grade modem may add up to hundreds of milliseconds of delay to the packet stream. For example, a typical modem buffer is about 300KByte, and a typical upstream speed is about 5Mbps, which can result in as much as 500ms delay for a packet flow. QoS routers cannot ever solve that delay. LagBuster does.” Source [...]

]]> By: ronc http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt#comment-265459 ronc Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:07:57 +0000 http://www.cringely.com/?p=4858#comment-265459 Also, its true that the word "modem" is now used in a different context than it was in the 90s. But since it's just a contraction for "modulator/demodulator" it still applies since it "changes" or "modulates" the data signal on the LAN into a form suitable for the first hop of the WAN.

]]> Also, its true that the word “modem” is now used in a different context than it was in the 90s. But since it’s just a contraction for “modulator/demodulator” it still applies since it “changes” or “modulates” the data signal on the LAN into a form suitable for the first hop of the WAN.

]]> By: Ronc http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt#comment-265458 Ronc Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:58:38 +0000 http://www.cringely.com/?p=4858#comment-265458 I'm not sure we can assume that QofS means the same thing to everyone. How does one distinguish a game packet from a voip or video streaming packet? And if you can distinguish them, which should be given priority over the other by an "intelligent" infrastructure? Most home routers have a QofS option but it's not on by default probably because it requires configuring based on such personal decisions. The question remains as to whether this Fancy Box does anything more than implement QofS for game packets, which could have been done by configuring the router for the game packets. Remember, their own tutorials create "delay" by introducing competing traffic from video uploads on the same local network.

]]> I’m not sure we can assume that QofS means the same thing to everyone. How does one distinguish a game packet from a voip or video streaming packet? And if you can distinguish them, which should be given priority over the other by an “intelligent” infrastructure? Most home routers have a QofS option but it’s not on by default probably because it requires configuring based on such personal decisions. The question remains as to whether this Fancy Box does anything more than implement QofS for game packets, which could have been done by configuring the router for the game packets. Remember, their own tutorials create “delay” by introducing competing traffic from video uploads on the same local network.

]]> By: Robert http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt#comment-265413 Robert Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:46:36 +0000 http://www.cringely.com/?p=4858#comment-265413 Well, probably because once a packet is on the net, it's no longer passing through any "modems" (itself, an incorrectly used term. There are few actual modems these days). After traffic leaves your home modem, it's being routed by a presumably intelligent high-end infrastructure that does observe QoS.

]]> Well, probably because once a packet is on the net, it’s no longer passing through any “modems” (itself, an incorrectly used term. There are few actual modems these days). After traffic leaves your home modem, it’s being routed by a presumably intelligent high-end infrastructure that does observe QoS.

]]> By: Ronc http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt#comment-265247 Ronc Tue, 16 Oct 2012 21:54:52 +0000 http://www.cringely.com/?p=4858#comment-265247 "...I was thinking of building an app..." It's a sad commentary that an app has to be able to be built for such an obvious need. Of course the hardware plus the app would be called a DVR, but thanks to copy protection, there are no convenient devices capable of doing for digital what the VCR does for analog.

]]> “…I was thinking of building an app…” It’s a sad commentary that an app has to be able to be built for such an obvious need. Of course the hardware plus the app would be called a DVR, but thanks to copy protection, there are no convenient devices capable of doing for digital what the VCR does for analog.

]]> By: Cavepainter http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt#comment-265162 Cavepainter Tue, 16 Oct 2012 04:48:11 +0000 http://www.cringely.com/?p=4858#comment-265162 Mostly this affects my ability to enjoy streaming media. As a result, I was thinking of building an app to allow my 'users' (family) to select media - and have the download occur in the background - with caching of the data on disk for later viewing from a central server. This would avoid the buffer bloat problem as the viewing portion would be deferred to a later time, and would only traverse my internal 1Gb/sec network (no/minimal buffering going on there given the traffic rates I can typically generate internally). I don't notice much of an issue with gaming (FPS/MMORPGs) - although, getting a boost in performance wouldn't be bad - but I don't know if that is worth the asking price of the Lagbuster. Might head out to the used computer stores and see if I can get some decent machines to roll my own...

]]> Mostly this affects my ability to enjoy streaming media. As a result, I was thinking of building an app to allow my ‘users’ (family) to select media – and have the download occur in the background – with caching of the data on disk for later viewing from a central server. This would avoid the buffer bloat problem as the viewing portion would be deferred to a later time, and would only traverse my internal 1Gb/sec network (no/minimal buffering going on there given the traffic rates I can typically generate internally).

I don’t notice much of an issue with gaming (FPS/MMORPGs) – although, getting a boost in performance wouldn’t be bad – but I don’t know if that is worth the asking price of the Lagbuster. Might head out to the used computer stores and see if I can get some decent machines to roll my own…

]]> By: EricE http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt#comment-264861 EricE Fri, 12 Oct 2012 04:12:45 +0000 http://www.cringely.com/?p=4858#comment-264861 Hmm... just load pfSense on an old box, run the traffic shaper wizard and set your upload speed to be a little less than what it actually is so your firewall does the throttling to the clients and avoids the buffer issue outlined here. Hmm... seems to be exactly what LagBuster does. Indeed - I'm doing it now and have been for some time.

]]> Hmm… just load pfSense on an old box, run the traffic shaper wizard and set your upload speed to be a little less than what it actually is so your firewall does the throttling to the clients and avoids the buffer issue outlined here. Hmm… seems to be exactly what LagBuster does. Indeed – I’m doing it now and have been for some time.

]]> By: Maynard Handley http://www.cringely.com/2012/10/01/clothing-may-be-optional-but-bufferbloat-isnt#comment-264857 Maynard Handley Fri, 12 Oct 2012 02:38:26 +0000 http://www.cringely.com/?p=4858#comment-264857 "Both companies make cable and DSL modems as well as routers. Other companies make these, too, but Cisco and Google can claim bigger network infrastructure shadows than any of those other companies" And this statement shows why they are not excited. The statement is completely decoupled from real life. The way the REAL world works is I don't get to choose my modem. I get given some PoS box manufactured by 2Wire ("the world's most incompetent WiFi integrator") or Scientific Atlanta ("purveyor of crap for over thirty years") by my cable company (or the equivalent, like ATT). For the privilege of using this piece of garbage that has to be rebooted once a week and which uses 50W of power even when idle, I pay my ISP $6 or so a month. Can I change the box? Not according to them. So, how do you expect Cisco and Motorola to flood the world with new modems? ATT is quite happy for me to use my garbage modem till the end of time. it was paid off four years ago, and all it does now is generate an additional $6 for them every month. I would love to tell ATT what to do with their $6, but if they claim I can't use another modem, what am I supposed to do? Hook something up that I hope will work and that they won't notice? And I'll still be paying that $6 every month. As usual, the issue here is not technology, it is the business model. The ISPs are what they are --- monopolies or duopolies that are throttling competition --- but a lifetime of propaganda from people like you has convinced Congress and most of America that it would be the worst thing in the world for the Government (boo, hiss, you suck) to ever do anything to limit what a large company might want to do.

]]> “Both companies make cable and DSL modems as well as routers. Other companies make these, too, but Cisco and Google can claim bigger network infrastructure shadows than any of those other companies”

And this statement shows why they are not excited. The statement is completely decoupled from real life.

The way the REAL world works is I don’t get to choose my modem. I get given some PoS box manufactured by 2Wire (“the world’s most incompetent WiFi integrator”) or Scientific Atlanta (“purveyor of crap for over thirty years”) by my cable company (or the equivalent, like ATT).

For the privilege of using this piece of garbage that has to be rebooted once a week and which uses 50W of power even when idle, I pay my ISP $6 or so a month. Can I change the box? Not according to them.

So, how do you expect Cisco and Motorola to flood the world with new modems?
ATT is quite happy for me to use my garbage modem till the end of time. it was paid off four years ago, and all it does now is generate an additional $6 for them every month.
I would love to tell ATT what to do with their $6, but if they claim I can’t use another modem, what am I supposed to do? Hook something up that I hope will work and that they won’t notice? And I’ll still be paying that $6 every month.

As usual, the issue here is not technology, it is the business model. The ISPs are what they are — monopolies or duopolies that are throttling competition — but a lifetime of propaganda from people like you has convinced Congress and most of America that it would be the worst thing in the world for the Government (boo, hiss, you suck) to ever do anything to limit what a large company might want to do.

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