Playing with fq_codel in 2.4

gsmornot

Interesting. MacOS 10.14.1 Beta. Removed all shaping from my gig connection and A on DSLRepots.
WiFi is A as well via iPhone iOS 12.1 Beta and reaches over 400Mb in each direction. Not bad.

dtaht

What's your AP?

What sort of stats is OSX reporting?

netstat -I en0 -qq # where en0 is your wifi interface

gsmornot

@dtaht said in Playing with fq_codel in 2.4:

What's your AP?

What sort of stats is OSX reporting?

netstat -I en0 -qq # where en0 is your wifi interface

AP is AirPort Extreme AC. I will have to check the other later.
I have 4 AirPorts around the house for coverage and all on channels based on least used per location to reduce interference.

bafonso

You may not see bad results of bufferbloat if the ISP has taken the proper measures to curb it.

Harvy66

@tman222 BBR2 is in the works. Better utilization, less aggressive. 1.0 was a great first attempt.

tman222

Hi @Harvy66 - that's great to hear. I'm pretty sure I'm using a fairly dated version of the algorithm as it has been enabled on machines which are running off the stable Debian branch (so older 4.9.x kernel).

Regarding, fq_codel on Apple devices, I can confirm that it appears to be consistent across both iOS and Mac OS X devices using the latest version of the respective operating systems:

iPad (2x2 AC, iOS 12):
https://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/39645428

Laptop (2x2 AC, Mac OS X 10.13.6):
https://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/39645618

The WiFi AP used in this case was as Ubiquiti AC-HD. I'm pretty impressed that I'm able to transmit 400-500Mbit over wireless with minimal bloat; pretty cool! I wish I had saved some of the old tests I ran, but I do recall struggling to get any higher than a "B" on the bufferbloat score.

occamsrazor

@tman222 said in Playing with fq_codel in 2.4:

Regarding, fq_codel on Apple devices, I can confirm that it appears to be consistent across both iOS and Mac OS X devices using the latest version of the respective operating systems:

As I use almost exclusively Apple devices, at least for those that utilize significant traffic, does this affect how one might set up the fq_codel traffic limiter?

And I've become a bit lost following all the recent discussion especially with @tman222 and @dtaht..... Is the basic setup outlined in the pfSense hangout here still the recommended basic setup? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8nL81DzTlU&t=380

Pentangle

Hi, i've been directed here by Jim Pingle. I have a 2.4.4 pfsense and have deployed FQ_Codel as per the hangouts youtube video.
However, I have a problem - whilst the bufferbloat tests now give A+ as you'd expect, whenever I use the bufferbloat test at DSLReports the download test is fine, but coming to the end of the upload test it knocks out all the other connections such as streaming radio, VoIP calls or RDP connections in the office.
Initially I thought it would be due to an over-optimistic setting for bandwidth (the WAN is an 80/20 FTTC connection which nominally performs at 71Mbit/s downstream and 17.5Mbit/s upstream as per speedtest.net tests done at the time) so as I originally had it set to 68/15 I brought it down to 60/12 and whilst it's a bit better it still dumps all the connections right at the end of the upstream test.
So, I have a feeling it might be an exhaustion of the queue? How do I view the counters in real time? and if it's not to do with this does anyone have any idea how to go about troubleshooting?

Second question - whilst I'd like to use FQ_Codel, can someone propose how I can combine this with a queue or limiter structure in order to guarantee bandwidth for things such as VoIP?

TheNarc

@pentangle I assume this was implied, but just to clarify, you do not see these connections being dropped when you don't use any limiters? One thing that may be worth trying (and at least is easy to try) is setting masks on the queues. That will cause a dynamic queue to be created for each host, rather than all hosts funneling into a single queue, while still enforcing a cumulative bandwidth limit. To be clear, don't set masks on the limiters, but on the child queues of the limiters. For download queues set a destination mask and for upload queues set a source mask; for both set them to 32/128 bits for IPv4/IPv6.

tman222

I would try @TheNarc 's suggestions first. If you still experience drops, here are a couple more things to try:

Reducing the quantum parameter on the algorithm to something lower like 300. Reference: https://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/codel/wiki/Best_practices_for_benchmarking_Codel_and_FQ_Codel/
If that also does not help, you could create separate weighted queues under your limiters (e.g. one set of queues for VoIP and RDP traffic, another set for the other traffic) to ensure that VoIP and RDP are guaranteed a certain amount of bandwidth. This would also require you to create the appropriate firewall rules to route VoIP and RDP through the one set of queues, while the rest of the traffic would go through the other set of queues.

Hope this helps.

bafonso

As far as I know, there are no weights or priorities with FQ_CODEL. If you want such functionality you could try using QFQ + codel. From ipfw man page:

implements the QFQ algorithm, which is a very fast variant of
WF2Q+, with similar service guarantees and O(1) processing
costs (roughly, 200-250ns per packet).

Using QFQ + Codel works pretty well for me when it comes to sharing bandwith priority based.

dtaht

@tman222 try your test further from the ap.

dtaht

@pentangle normally things like voip "just work" with fq_codel. no classification required. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327781871_Analysing_the_Latency_of_Sparse_Flows_in_the_FQ-CoDel_Queue_Management_Algorithm

jasonraymundo31

how to do fq_codel on dual wan (load balancing + failover) setup?

I tried to follow jim-p video on fq_codel, it works on single wan. but on dual it's not working.

dtaht

More long duration flent based tests would help. I'm concerned about various bits of flakyness y'all are reporting, like dropping all connections at the end of a test.
if there is someone out there that would like to send me a box to play with, or (or more simply) open up a ssh port, that would help.

bafonso

@knowbe4 said in Playing with fq_codel in 2.4:

how to do fq_codel on dual wan (load balancing + failover) setup?

I tried to follow jim-p video on fq_codel, it works on single wan. but on dual it's not working.

I have several gateways (WAN + VPNs) and I did it using limiter rules on LAN. They all get put into the same pipe. The tricky part with your setup is that your overall bandwidth is shared over two connections so if I were you I would use interface QoS per WAN interface and use a round-robin WAN assignment which is I'm assuming you are doing given you are doing load balancing. The only way to properly load balance and share bandwidth evenly between your customers would be to weight the random gateway assignment based on real time bandwidth usage, effectively load balancing the bandwidth as opposed to connections. I'm not sure such thing exists off the shelf.

zwck

@dtaht

What exactly would you need, a port open on the pfsense so you could ssh into it and you could play with fq_codel. Or are you more interested in just pure data acquisition with a pfsense standard config using flent. I have not looked into flent, are there some guides i can follow? Or would it be already enough to setup a ubuntu vm and you'll do the rest.

Pentangle

@thenarc Sorry for the delay, this is my first time back in the office since I wrote my last post. I've tried adding masks to the queues but still get connections dying right at the end of the upload test. I can confirm when disabling the limiters the connections stay up.

Pentangle

@tman222 I'm holding my breath, but I think that Quantum change might have fixed this. It's not dropped this time. I'll try further tests later, but I suspect this might be the issue - thanks!

Pentangle

@tman222 Done a bunch more tests and no drops!! :) thanks.