Re: [Bloat] I wrote a blog entry about devices I know of out there...

[Sebastian Moeller]

> On Feb 3, 2017, at 21:11, David Lang  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 3 Feb 2017, Rich Brown wrote:
> 
>>> On Feb 3, 2017, at 2:50 PM, David Lang  wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Fri, 3 Feb 2017, Rich Brown wrote:
>>> 
 Friends in town say that Fairpoint recommends a Zyxel VMG4380-B10A modem 
 for bonded pairs. They seem to have fairly good luck with it.
>>> 
>>> I've got a VMG4325-B10A and it's horrific, still running a 2.6 kernel. I 
>>> routinely have several seconds of buffering on my upload. according to the 
>>> Zyxel site, the 4380 has a coax connection.
>> 
>> Yes, that's why it makes sense to stick LEDE in series with the Zyxel, to 
>> let LEDE handle the queueing.
> 
> the trouble is that to do this, you have to set the outbound speed well below 
> the actual speed, and when you only have 2Mb to start with…

Why? I have been using XDSL lines with great succes with SQM set to 
100% of the actual sync bandwidth and accounting for all known overhead. This 
worked so well without induced bufferbloat that I even caught my ISP 
temporarily adding a VLAN tag to my line; the added 4 bytes made buffer bloat 
re-appear (I confirmed with re-measuring the overhead, increasng the sqm 
overhead by 4 also got rid of the bufferbloat). With ingess, sure one needs to 
stay well below the line speed, but egress on ADSL is pretty much solved. 
Unless the DSLAM’s uplink is congested, then all bets are off…

Best Reagards
Sebastian

> 
>> I've actually never seen a Zyxel, so can't speak to the connectors. Hmmm... 
>> The Zyxel specs at 
>> https://www.zyxel.com/me/en/promotions/promotion_20130416_076615_me_en.shtml 
>> show the 4380 as having both a GbE connector (as if... :-) and a coax HPNA 
>> connector.
> 
> Yes, this series has a Gig-E as well as the DSL/Coax WAN connector(s)
> 
> It's really a horrible, overbuffered, limited firmware from the factory (the 
> "firewall" has three settings for example)
> 
> I'm looking for a replacement for it, and when you spoke of people 
> recommending it, I have to disagree with them.
> 
> David Lang
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Re: [Bloat] I wrote a blog entry about devices I know of out there...

[Jim Gettys]

On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 3:11 PM, David Lang  wrote:

> On Fri, 3 Feb 2017, Rich Brown wrote:
>
> On Feb 3, 2017, at 2:50 PM, David Lang  wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, 3 Feb 2017, Rich Brown wrote:
>>>
>>> Friends in town say that Fairpoint recommends a Zyxel VMG4380-B10A modem
 for bonded pairs. They seem to have fairly good luck with it.

>>>
>>> I've got a VMG4325-B10A and it's horrific, still running a 2.6 kernel. I
>>> routinely have several seconds of buffering on my upload. according to the
>>> Zyxel site, the 4380 has a coax connection.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, that's why it makes sense to stick LEDE in series with the Zyxel, to
>> let LEDE handle the queueing.
>>
>
> the trouble is that to do this, you have to set the outbound speed well
> below the actual speed, and when you only have 2Mb to start with...
>
> I've actually never seen a Zyxel, so can't speak to the connectors.
>> Hmmm... The Zyxel specs at https://www.zyxel.com/me/en/pr
>> omotions/promotion_20130416_076615_me_en.shtml show the 4380 as having
>> both a GbE connector (as if... :-) and a coax HPNA connector.
>>
>
> Yes, this series has a Gig-E as well as the DSL/Coax WAN connector(s)
>
> It's really a horrible, overbuffered, limited firmware from the factory
> (the "firewall" has three settings for example)
>
> I'm looking for a replacement for it, and when you spoke of people
> recommending it, I have to disagree with them.
>
> ​
The Evenroute guys ship a DSL modem with their router in their current
product. It's based on a recent Openwrt.

Installation was pretty sane, though there can be a hiccup in the
installation if your ISP runs PPOE, as you need the account credentials for
the line (a username/password pair). I found them on a label on the old DSL
modem being replaced in one of the two installation experiences. Evenroute
is improving the installation directions as we speak.
Their installation directions were already better than for most devices;
the biggest problem we ran into was for PPOE.  So I can recommend going
with their product; the first time I've been able to make any
recommendation for anyone on DSL short of just neutering the existing
router with a second one able to run SQM.

They are looking into trying to support an integrated modem/router when
they can get a suitable one (probably based on a Lantiq chip, for which
there are open source drivers).
If anyone has experience with one of these Lantiq based integrated routers,
I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it...

The other headache in DSL is that some ISP's don't actually give you the
bandwidth you pay for and the bandwidth varies widely during the day; so
dynamic adjustment of the bandwidth may be necessary on some ISP's. As far
as I'm concerned, that's the killer app for Evenroute's product, with a
close second that they monitor your DSL modem for SNR and signal strength
and errors for you, making arguing with your ISP easier.
  - Jim
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Re: [Bloat] I wrote a blog entry about devices I know of out there...

[David Lang]

On Fri, 3 Feb 2017, Rich Brown wrote:


On Feb 3, 2017, at 2:50 PM, David Lang  wrote:

On Fri, 3 Feb 2017, Rich Brown wrote:


Friends in town say that Fairpoint recommends a Zyxel VMG4380-B10A modem for 
bonded pairs. They seem to have fairly good luck with it.


I've got a VMG4325-B10A and it's horrific, still running a 2.6 kernel. I 
routinely have several seconds of buffering on my upload. according to the 
Zyxel site, the 4380 has a coax connection.


Yes, that's why it makes sense to stick LEDE in series with the Zyxel, to let 
LEDE handle the queueing.


the trouble is that to do this, you have to set the outbound speed well below 
the actual speed, and when you only have 2Mb to start with...


I've actually never seen a Zyxel, so can't speak to the connectors. Hmmm... 
The Zyxel specs at 
https://www.zyxel.com/me/en/promotions/promotion_20130416_076615_me_en.shtml 
show the 4380 as having both a GbE connector (as if... :-) and a coax HPNA 
connector.


Yes, this series has a Gig-E as well as the DSL/Coax WAN connector(s)

It's really a horrible, overbuffered, limited firmware from the factory (the 
"firewall" has three settings for example)


I'm looking for a replacement for it, and when you spoke of people recommending 
it, I have to disagree with them.


David Lang
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Re: [Bloat] I wrote a blog entry about devices I know of out there...

[Rich Brown]

> On Feb 3, 2017, at 2:50 PM, David Lang  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 3 Feb 2017, Rich Brown wrote:
> 
>> Friends in town say that Fairpoint recommends a Zyxel VMG4380-B10A modem for 
>> bonded pairs. They seem to have fairly good luck with it.
> 
> I've got a VMG4325-B10A and it's horrific, still running a 2.6 kernel. I 
> routinely have several seconds of buffering on my upload. according to the 
> Zyxel site, the 4380 has a coax connection.

Yes, that's why it makes sense to stick LEDE in series with the Zyxel, to let 
LEDE handle the queueing. 

I've actually never seen a Zyxel, so can't speak to the connectors. Hmmm... The 
Zyxel specs at 
https://www.zyxel.com/me/en/promotions/promotion_20130416_076615_me_en.shtml 
show the 4380 as having both a GbE connector (as if... :-) and a coax HPNA 
connector.

Rich

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Re: [Bloat] I wrote a blog entry about devices I know of out there...

[David Lang]

On Fri, 3 Feb 2017, Rich Brown wrote:


Friends in town say that Fairpoint recommends a Zyxel VMG4380-B10A modem for 
bonded pairs. They seem to have fairly good luck with it.


I've got a VMG4325-B10A and it's horrific, still running a 2.6 kernel. I 
routinely have several seconds of buffering on my upload. according to the Zyxel 
site, the 4380 has a coax connection.


David Lang
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Re: [Bloat] I wrote a blog entry about devices I know of out there...

[Rich Brown]

> On Feb 3, 2017, at 2:00 PM, Jim Gettys  wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 1:55 PM, Rich Brown  > wrote:
> Friends in town say that Fairpoint recommends a Zyxel VMG4380-B10A modem for 
> bonded pairs. They seem to have fairly good luck with it.
> 
> ​Unfortunately, the OpenWrt wiki says it has a Broadcom chip in it: no open 
> source driver the last I knew for them...  While I believe Broadcom sold off 
> its wifi business and the recipient vendor recently opened its driver (and 
> there was a reverse engineered driver already available), I don't believe the 
> DSL chips had a similar change.
> 
> ​ - Jim

I'm a strong proponent of staying with vendor firmware on DSL equipment. DSL is 
such a dicey technology, running on crummy copper lines, with lots of odd 
protocol options, variations, etc (and ATM (?!)). 

It gets hard to defend an outage/trouble report when they ask, "What kind of 
modem do you have" and you start to tell them that you hot-rodded the modem to 
use some lunatic firmware with anti-buffer-what? :-)

So I stick to using their modem. That goes double for a Zyxel that's bonding 
two pairs: just plug the LEDE router's WAN Ethernet into it, and the bits go in 
and out. Don't peer too closely at the man behind the curtain/sausage being 
made. If they're not delivering anything close to their promised/estimated 
speed, then you have cause to complain.

In their defense, I will say that the Fairpoint techs on the support lines are 
halfway (or quite) knowledgeable, and are supportive of either of these cases:

- I run my own router.
- I put the DSL modem in bridge mode, and let the router supply PPPoE 
credentials

But letting Fairpoint-supplied equipment handle the physical link seems good to 
me.

My two cents...

Rich

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Re: [Bloat] I wrote a blog entry about devices I know of out there...

[Jim Gettys]

On Fri, Feb 3, 2017 at 1:55 PM, Rich Brown  wrote:

> Friends in town say that Fairpoint recommends a Zyxel VMG4380-B10A modem
> for bonded pairs. They seem to have fairly good luck with it.
>

​Unfortunately, the OpenWrt wiki says it has a Broadcom chip in it: no open
source driver the last I knew for them...  While I believe Broadcom sold
off its wifi business and the recipient vendor recently opened its driver
(and there was a reverse engineered driver already available), I don't
believe the DSL chips had a similar change.

​ - Jim
​

>
> Rich
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Re: [Bloat] I wrote a blog entry about devices I know of out there...

[Rich Brown]

Friends in town say that Fairpoint recommends a Zyxel VMG4380-B10A modem for 
bonded pairs. They seem to have fairly good luck with it.

Rich
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Re: [Bloat] I wrote a blog entry about devices I know of out there...

[David Lang]

On Thu, 2 Feb 2017, Jim Gettys wrote:


For home users.

The Evenroute is the first I can recommend to most people on DSL; it deals
with ISP's who don't provide the bandwidth they sell and self tunes over
time.

https://gettys.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/home-products-that-fixmitigate-bufferbloat/

Let me know of other devices that should go on the list.

I'd love to see a volunteer to keep a set of pages on these devices to help
guide people toward working products.


Are you aware of any decent routers that have dual DSL interfaces?

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[Bloat] I wrote a blog entry about devices I know of out there...

[Jim Gettys]

For home users.

The Evenroute is the first I can recommend to most people on DSL; it deals
with ISP's who don't provide the bandwidth they sell and self tunes over
time.

https://gettys.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/home-products-that-fixmitigate-bufferbloat/

Let me know of other devices that should go on the list.

I'd love to see a volunteer to keep a set of pages on these devices to help
guide people toward working products.
   - Jim
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