Thank you David. Now, shifting the focus a bit. Would a gamer experience some improvement if they made a change in their router? What needs to be done for a gamer to get tangible improvement?
Gene
----------------------------------------------
Eugene Chang
IEEE Life Senior Member
IEEE Communications Society & Signal Processing Society,
Hawaii Chapter Chair
IEEE Life Member Affinity Group Hawaii Chair
IEEE Entrepreneurship, Mentor
[email protected]
m 781-799-0233 (in Honolulu)
> On May 1, 2024, at 9:18 AM, David Lang <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 1 May 2024, Eugene Y Chang wrote:
>
>> Thanks David,
>>
>>
>>> On Apr 30, 2024, at 6:12 PM, David Lang <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, 30 Apr 2024, Eugene Y Chang wrote:
>>>
>>>> I’m not completely up to speed on the gory details. Please humor me. I am
>>>> pretty good on the technical marketing magic.
>>>>
>>>> What is the minimum configuration of an ISP infrastructure where we can
>>>> show an A/B (before and after) test?
>>>> It can be a simplified scenario. The simpler, the better. We can talk
>>>> through the issues of how minimal is adequate. Of course and ISP engineer
>>>> will argue against simplicity.
>>>
>>> I did not see a very big improvement on a 4/.5 dsl link, but there was
>>> improvement.
>>
>> Would a user feel the improvement with a 10 minute session:
>> shopping on Amazon?
>> using Salesforce?
>> working with a shared Google doc?
>
> When it's only a single user, they are unlikely to notice any difference.
>
> But if you have one person on zoom, a second downloading something, and a
> third on Amazon, it doesn't take much to notice a difference.
>
>>> if you put openwrt on the customer router and configure cake with the
>>> targeted bandwith at ~80% of line speed, you will usually see a drastic
>>> improvement for just about any connection.
>>
>> Are you saying some of the benefits can be realized with just upgrading the
>> subscriber’s router? This makes adoption harder because the subscriber will
>> lose the ISP’s support for any connectivity issues. If a demo impresses the
>> subscribers, the ISP still needs to embrace this change; otherwise the ISP
>> will wash their hands of any subscriber problems.
>
> Yes, just upgrading the subscriber's device with cake and configuring it
> appropriately largely solves the problem (at the cost of sacraficing bandwith
> because cake isn't working directly on the data flowing from the ISP to the
> client, and so it has to work indirectly to get the Internet server to slow
> down instead and that's a laggy, imperect work-around. If the ISPs router
> does active queue management with fq_codel, then you don't have to do this.
>
> This is how we know this works, many of use have been doing this for years
> (see the bufferbloat mailing list and it's archives_
>
>>> If you can put fq_codel on both ends of the link, you can usually skip
>>> capping the bandwidth.
>>
>> This is good if this means the benefits can be achieved with just the CPE.
>> This also limits the changes to subscribers that care.
>
> fq_codel on the ISPs router for downlink, and on the subscribers router for
> uplink.
>
> putting cake on the router on the subscriber's end and tuning it
> appropriately can achieve most of the benefit, but is more work to configure.
>
>>>
>>> unfortunantly, it's not possible to just add this to the ISPs existing
>>> hardware without having the source for the firmware there (and if they have
>>> their queues in ASICs it's impossible to change them.
>>
>> Is this just an alternative to having the change at the CPE?
>> Yes this is harder for routers in the network.
>
> simple fq_codel on both ends of the bottleneck connection works quite well
> without any configuration. Cake adds some additional fairness capabilities
> and has a mode to work around the router on the other end of the bottleneck
> not doing active queue management
>
>>> If you can point at the dramatic decrease in latency, with no bandwidth
>>> losses, that Starlink has achieved on existing hardware, that may help.
>>
>> This is good to know for the engineers. This adds confusion with the
>> subscribers.
>>
>>>
>>> There are a number of ISPs around the world that have implemented active
>>> queue management and report very good results from doing so.
>>
>> Can we get these ISPs to publically report how they have achieved great
>> latency reduction?
>> We can help them get credit for caring about their subscribers. It
>> would/could be a (short term) competitive advantage.
>> Of course their competitors will (might) adopt these changes and eliminate
>> the advantage, BUT the subscribers will retain glow of the initial marketing
>> for a much longer time.
>
> several of them have done so, I think someone else posted a report from one
> in this thread.
>
>>> But showing that their existing hardware can do it when their upstream
>>> vendor doesn't support it is going to be hard.
>>
>> Is the upstream vendor a network provider or a computing center?
>> Getting good latency from the subscriber, through the access network to the
>> edge computing center and CDNs would be great. The CDNs would harvest the
>> benefits. The other computing configurations would have make the change to
>> be competitive.
>
> I'm talking about the manufacturer of the routers that the ISPs deploy at the
> last hop before getting to the subscriber, and the router on the subscriber
> end of the link (although most of those are running some variation of
> openWRT, so turning it on would not be significant work for the manufacturer)
>
>> We wouild have done our part at pushing the next round of adoption.
>
> Many of us have been pushing this for well over a decade. Getting Starlink's
> attention to address their bufferbloat issues is a major success.
>
> David Lang
>
>> Gene
>>
>>>
>>> David Lang
>>>
>>>>
>>>> We will want to show the human visible impact and not debate good or not
>>>> so good measurements. If we get the business and community subscribers on
>>>> our side, we win.
>>>>
>>>> Note:
>>>> Stage 1 is to show we have a pure software fix (that can work on their
>>>> hardware). The fix is “so dramatic” that subscribers can experience it
>>>> without debating measurements.
>>>> Stage 2 discusses why the ISP should demand that their equipment vendors
>>>> add this software. (The software could already be available, but the ISP
>>>> doesn’t think it is worth the trouble to enable it.) Nothing will happen
>>>> unless we stay engaged. We need to keep the subscribers engaged, too.
>>>>
>>>> Should we have a conference call to discuss this?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Gene
>>>> ----------------------------------------------
>>>> Eugene Chang
>>>> IEEE Life Senior Member
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Apr 30, 2024, at 3:52 PM, Jim Forster <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Gene, David,
>>>>> ‘m
>>>>> Agreed that the technical problem is largely solved with cake & codel.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also that demos are good. How to do one for this problem>
>>>>>
>>>>> — Jim
>>>>>
>>>>>> The bandwidth mantra has been used for so long that a technical
>>>>>> discussion cannot unseat the mantra.
>>>>>> Some technical parties use the mantra to sell more, faster, ineffective
>>>>>> service. Gullible customers accept that they would be happy if they
>>>>>> could afford even more speed.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Shouldn’t we create a demo to show the solution?
>>>>>> To show is more effective than to debate. It is impossible to explain to
>>>>>> some people.
>>>>>> Has anyone tried to create a demo (to unseat the bandwidth mantra)?
>>>>>> Is an effective demo too complicated to create?
>>>>>> I’d be glad to participate in defining a demo and publicity campaign.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Gene
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Apr 30, 2024, at 2:36 PM, David Lang <[email protected]
>>>>>>> <mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
>>>>>>> <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]
>>>>>>> <mailto:[email protected]>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, 30 Apr 2024, Eugene Y Chang via Starlink wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I am always surprised how complicated these discussions become.
>>>>>>>> (Surprised mostly because I forgot the kind of issues this community
>>>>>>>> care about.) The discussion doesn’t shed light on the following
>>>>>>>> scenarios.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> While watching stream content, activating controls needed to switch
>>>>>>>> content sometimes (often?) have long pauses. I attribute that to
>>>>>>>> buffer bloat and high latency.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> With a happy household user watching streaming media, a second user
>>>>>>>> could have terrible shopping experience with Amazon. The interactive
>>>>>>>> response could be (is often) horrible. (Personally, I would be doing
>>>>>>>> email and working on a shared doc. The Amazon analogy probably applies
>>>>>>>> to more people.)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> How can we deliver graceful performance to both persons in a household?
>>>>>>>> Is seeking graceful performance too complicated to improve?
>>>>>>>> (I said “graceful” to allow technical flexibility.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> it's largely a solved problem from a technical point of view. fq_codel
>>>>>>> and cake solve this.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The solution is just not deployed widely, instead people argue that
>>>>>>> more bandwidth is needed instead.
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