[Bloat] Best approach for debloating Airbnb host?

[Bloat] Best approach for debloating Airbnb host?

[Rich Brown]

I stayed in an Airbnb rental last week. It was nicely appointed with a very gracious host who lived in the other half of the home. They had decent internet from xfinity - I was getting 20mbps/5mpbs.

But.. they have bad bufferbloat. I was on a Zoom call and occasionally people would sound like Darth Vader. I busted out a ping test to 8.8.8.8 and sure enough, latency spiked from a nominal 10-20 msec to 2500 msec and occasionally over 4000 msec.

I had to check out before I had a chance to mention it to the Airbnb host. And I'll probably leave it alone. But I'm still wondering - if I wanted to evangelize:

1. What would I say? I know I don't want to blurt out, "your network has bufferbloat". That sounds worse than the cooties :-) I imagine that I'd mumble something about the Zoom call occasionally sounding like Darth Vader, and that I'm a network professional and recognize the symptom, and that there's a technical fix for it. I'd probably pause to see if their eyes lit up ("Oh, that happens to us all the time...") before proceeding. And then...

2. What would I recommend? Obviously, inserting something with cake into the mix would help a lot. Even if they were willing to let me examine their entire network (Comcast router, Apple Airport in our Airbnb unit, other router?) I have no idea what kind of tar baby I would be touching. I don't want to become their network admin for the rest of time.

I know Dave Täht recommends that you help your local coffee shop debloat their network. But that's a place that you develop a personal relationship and you visit often enough to answer questions during a shake-down period. And they'll probably "let you in the back" to see what's there.

Anyone have good ideas about handling this? Or should I give it up?Thanks!

Rich

Re: [Bloat] Best approach for debloating Airbnb host?

[Sebastian Moeller]

Hi Rich,


> On Oct 17, 2023, at 14:39, Rich Brown via Bloat <bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> I stayed in an Airbnb rental last week. It was nicely appointed with a very gracious host who lived in the other half of the home. They had decent internet from xfinity - I was getting 20mbps/5mpbs.
> 
> But.. they have bad bufferbloat. I was on a Zoom call and occasionally people would sound like Darth Vader. I busted out a ping test to 8.8.8.8 and sure enough, latency spiked from a nominal 10-20 msec to 2500 msec and occasionally over 4000 msec.

	[SM] Maybe good to occasionally get a dose of the "common" internet experience to not forget how much we can achieve and how many networks are still feeling/behaving worse than they need to.


> I had to check out before I had a chance to mention it to the Airbnb host. And I'll probably leave it alone. But I'm still wondering - if I wanted to evangelize:
> 
> 1. What would I say? I know I don't want to blurt out, "your network has bufferbloat". That sounds worse than the cooties :-) I imagine that I'd mumble something about the Zoom call occasionally sounding like Darth Vader, and that I'm a network professional and recognize the symptom, and that there's a technical fix for it. I'd probably pause to see if their eyes lit up ("Oh, that happens to us all the time...") before proceeding. And then...

	[SM] I am terrible at such things, as I am not a people person, but I think that this approach, casual conversation touching a few topics and see whether it touches any pain points is a good one. No matter how bad the network if the users do not notice it will be a hard sell, especially with "strangers". What might help is to have a travel router prepared that can be plugged in via ethernet (and after a quick visit to the sqm-config) and used on the spot to demonstrate things (even though doing a video conference on the spot or trusting strangers to add gear to your network both seem awkward).


> 2. What would I recommend? Obviously, inserting something with cake into the mix would help a lot. Even if they were willing to let me examine their entire network (Comcast router, Apple Airport in our Airbnb unit, other router?) I have no idea what kind of tar baby I would be touching. I don't want to become their network admin for the rest of time.

	[SM] This is why maybe a demo unit would be helpful, but then we would need something with commercial grade support to point them at? Maybe evenroute's IQrouter (I like their approach, but I never tested it).

> I know Dave Täht recommends that you help your local coffee shop debloat their network. But that's a place that you develop a personal relationship and you visit often enough to answer questions during a shake-down period. And they'll probably "let you in the back" to see what's there.
> 
> Anyone have good ideas about handling this? Or should I give it up?Thanks!

	[SM] Again, I do not, I even failed (yet, still working on it) to convince my dad that his network could be improved.... (In his defense he mostly operates well below capacity and at 50% utilization there simply is no noticeable bufferbloat, remedies or no remedies ;) )


Regards
	Sebastian

P.S.: In theory having a test bed that could e tested directly over the internet could be convincing, if such a thing would not at the same time make all alarm bells ring about trusting such a test as unbiased and objective. 


> 
> Rich
> 
> 
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> Bloat mailing list
> Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat

Re: [Bloat] Best approach for debloating Airbnb host?

[Jonathan Morton]

> On 17 Oct, 2023, at 4:10 pm, Sebastian Moeller via Bloat <bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
> 
> 	[SM] This is why maybe a demo unit would be helpful, but then we would need something with commercial grade support to point them at? Maybe evenroute's IQrouter (I like their approach, but I never tested it).

For IETF Montreal and Singapore, I carried along my IQrouter and temporarily inserted it into the network of the AirBnBs we used - for which the host wasn't directly present.  I only had to inform it that there was a new network to calibrate itself to, and it ran the necessary capacity tests automatically.  It's also possible to inform it directly about the line's rated capacity, and it will just run tests to verify that the capacity is actually available.

Mine is the v2 hardware, which is no longer the one sold, but the v3 is just a newer model from the same underlying vendor.  There seems to be enough commonality for a similar feature set and UI to be available in both versions.  I'm sure that simplifies support logistics.  They would easily be able to cope with an 80/20 line.

> 2. What would I recommend? Obviously, inserting something with cake into the mix would help a lot. Even if they were willing to let me examine their entire network (Comcast router, Apple Airport in our Airbnb unit, other router?) I have no idea what kind of tar baby I would be touching. I don't want to become their network admin for the rest of time.

For a one-stop "plug it in and go" solution, the IQrouter is hard to beat.  Evenroute also do a reasonably good job of explaining the technical background on the necessary level for end users, to help them understand what needs to be plugged into what and why, and more importantly where things should NOT be plugged in any more.

Of course, while the IQrouter has a decent WiFi AP of its own, installing it wouldn't directly improve the WiFi characteristics of the Apple Airport - it's quite understandable to have a separate AP for guests, in particular so they don't have to "shout through a wall".  However, if the airwaves are not overly congested (we found that the 2.4GHz band was a mess in Montreal, but 5GHz was fine), that probably doesn't matter, as the WiFi link may not be the bottleneck.  If necessary, it could be substituted with a debloated AP - if there's one we can recommend with the "new wifi stack", so much the better.

 - Jonathan Morton

Re: [Bloat] Best approach for debloating Airbnb host?

[Dave Taht]

I carry around a gl.inet travel router with our stuff flashed on it.
If the conversation veers that way, I do a demo. I have upgraded two
out of 6 airbnbs so far. Cost me 30 bucks each. :)

I wish we could improve the airbnb speedtest. I have not tried it in a
while, but it did not test for bloat.

On Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 5:39 AM Rich Brown via Bloat
<bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:
>
> I stayed in an Airbnb rental last week. It was nicely appointed with a very gracious host who lived in the other half of the home. They had decent internet from xfinity - I was getting 20mbps/5mpbs.
>
> But.. they have bad bufferbloat. I was on a Zoom call and occasionally people would sound like Darth Vader. I busted out a ping test to 8.8.8.8 and sure enough, latency spiked from a nominal 10-20 msec to 2500 msec and occasionally over 4000 msec.
>
> I had to check out before I had a chance to mention it to the Airbnb host. And I'll probably leave it alone. But I'm still wondering - if I wanted to evangelize:
>
> 1. What would I say? I know I don't want to blurt out, "your network has bufferbloat". That sounds worse than the cooties :-) I imagine that I'd mumble something about the Zoom call occasionally sounding like Darth Vader, and that I'm a network professional and recognize the symptom, and that there's a technical fix for it. I'd probably pause to see if their eyes lit up ("Oh, that happens to us all the time...") before proceeding. And then...
>
> 2. What would I recommend? Obviously, inserting something with cake into the mix would help a lot. Even if they were willing to let me examine their entire network (Comcast router, Apple Airport in our Airbnb unit, other router?) I have no idea what kind of tar baby I would be touching. I don't want to become their network admin for the rest of time.
>
> I know Dave Täht recommends that you help your local coffee shop debloat their network. But that's a place that you develop a personal relationship and you visit often enough to answer questions during a shake-down period. And they'll probably "let you in the back" to see what's there.
>
> Anyone have good ideas about handling this? Or should I give it up?Thanks!
>
> Rich
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bloat mailing list
> Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net
> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat



-- 
Oct 30: https://netdevconf.info/0x17/news/the-maestro-and-the-music-bof.html
Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos

Re: [Bloat] Best approach for debloating Airbnb host?

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Tue, 17 Oct 2023 06:26:17 -0700
Dave Taht via Bloat <bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote:

> > 2. What would I recommend? Obviously, inserting something with cake into the mix would help a lot. Even if they were willing to let me examine their entire network (Comcast router, Apple Airport in our Airbnb unit, other router?) I have no idea what kind of tar baby I would be touching. I don't want to become their network admin for the rest of time.

By now most home routers do have option for some form of QoS but may default to disabled.

The problem with interacting with mortals on technical topics is that you create a debt.
It is often a multi-hour effort to resolve and the expectation is that this is free.
So doing it for relatives (of course), fixing a local coffee shop where you know the owner (sure),
but dealing with a one time AirBnb doesn't seem worth it.