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[Question] Choosing the right router for the job (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by some_random_nick@lemmy.world to c/homelab@lemmy.ml

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Hi everyone!
I recently successfully traced some network issues I was having in Counter Strike back to my QBittorrent client having too many open connections. Global maximum was set to around 500, with a 100 max per torrent. This caused major jitter and packetloss in-game.
My current router is an Asus N18U which has Asus-Merlin on it.
The issues kept coming back even with a smaller number of open connections to the point I had to shut down the client.
I can't remeber having these kinds of issue on Windows (current system CachyOS wit latest kernel), but I can ne wrong.
For what kind of specs should I be looking in a router for this kind of task? Would a MikroTik hEX refresh (upgraded RAM and CPU) be enough or overkill?
Thanks!

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[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's unusual behaviour for a torrent client. Even on a very popular torrent, I see between 50 and 80 connections.

Make sure you are enforcing encryption and not accepting unencrypted peer connections.

That aside, the hexs (refresh) will be plenty, assuming you have symmetric upload/download. I have an old Hex (no SFP) I use to cordon off my storage network from anything but my servers, and it passes the full 940mbps (no jumbo frames).

You may want to check what is happening with your torrent client with top and iotop. Did you give torrents queue preference or something like that? They should not be interfering with other traffic that aggressively.

[–] some_random_nick@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

It is beyond weird. I've spent months trying to pinpoint the issue. I changed kernels, distros, cable, reinstalled every piece of software I could. As for Qbittorrent. I haven't changed a single setting since installing it. The only thing I did was enable port-forwardung in my router's software for the client. As for queue preferences, are you refering to QoS and such? I didn't mess with it, since some posts suggested hampered speeds due to poor software optimization.

[Edit]: download and upload aren't symmetrical. My part of town doesn't have any fiber infrastructure, so I am stuck on copper cables with about 120Mb/s tops, and 1/10 of that for upload.

[–] non_burglar@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You might (read: likely) have traffic shaping upstream of you doing something as well. You can test for that at sites that measure buffer bloat.

In that case, you can implement some kind of queing management like fq_codel to help with this.

[–] some_random_nick@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

I alteady did that and the site measured an increase somewhere between 20ms and 50ms, but in-game it would frequently go up to +100ms. I have almost no onowlegde in the domain of networking, so going for a hardware solution is easier in my case.

[–] tychosmoose@piefed.social 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The router you need depends on your connection bandwidth and whether it uses pppoe. Also what worth considering: Do you want the router to host any VPN tunnels? Do you want some headroom for the future?

The hEX Refresh test results show that it could handle maybe 600 to maybe 800Mbps, depending on the traffic and configuration (looking at somewhere between the 512 and 1518 byte result for mixed traffic routing). It will do less with pppoe overhead. And less still if it's hosting one end of a tunnel. But the price is good. Honestly I don't think it would be overkill for most connections.

For me I would probably also consider the hAP ax S at this performance level. A little bit more money, but with wifi.

If you want more performance the hAP ax2 is the next step up for not much more money. It will handle gigabit fiber without a problem and also has wifi. But unlike the other two it has no USB port, so you won't be able to expand the storage, if that is important to you.

[–] some_random_nick@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Wifi isn't that important to me, since I would keep my old one and use it as a brigde for phones. All other hardware (pihole, etc.) would be connected with an ethernet cable. I haven't considered VPNs as of yet. My only consideration is it handling a lot of traffic or at least the traffic I currently have. Having to turn things off just to play a game is kinda stupid...
Where I live, there is no gigabit infrastructure :-/ I am stuck with 120 Mb/s for the forseeable future. 600-800Mb/s is plenty for me.