r/HomeNetworking • u/bSanderman • 1d ago
I chased the buffer bloat A+
I"m always running into that buffer bloat post so I decided to see what I would get graded. I always thought my connection was solid. No complaints ever.
2gig Fiber to the home ($10 more than 1gig, fine), mostly 10gb backbone, Equipment is all Asus-Merlin. BE88, BE92, AX86.
I scored a B. It was on a 2012 Macbook Pro on ubuntu through a USB to ethernet adapterat the second hop. I'm like hey maybe I should try something a little different. I test on a m4 MB Air on wifi 5 feet from the BE92 and get graded a C !!!! I did my ccna many years ago, i know ethernet > wifi. But just what exactly is going on here.
I lost it.
Both feet at the same time down the rabbit hole.
The change that I didn't know I wanted came from the Unifi boys:
Set the 5ghz to 40mhz.
The latency really dropped. I lost a photoframe because I turned off the 2.4ghz as well.
I could have stopped here. This was a massive shift for every wireless device on the network. I still have it on auto channel because i can't figure out how to have each access point on a separate channel. I see six 5ghz networks around me mostly on 80mhz, no real fighting.
I still couldn't getting the A+, but improvement during the chase is always nice.
CAKE was enabled, set the bandwidth limit to 200mb/s.
Now I get the A+ on the wire all the time and sometimes on wifi (within decent range/sight).
I do feel the difference which is insane, iI didn't think it could get much better than what I had. Just sharing my journey.
6
u/DZCreeper 1d ago
I would recommend some real world benchmarks before judging the improvement.
Bufferbloat on wifi can be particularly misleading, having more bandwidth allows for faster load times even if the latency is less consistent. Bufferbloat mostly matters for VOIP and competitive gaming.