[Bloat] SQM becoming mainstream (finally)

[Bloat] SQM becoming mainstream (finally)

[Rich Brown]

I regularly receive email alerts from alerts.google.com for “bufferbloat” and “high ping time”. My inbox receives daily notes with links to Reddit articles asking, “could this really be bufferbloat?”, and occasional announcements of “the BEST gaming router of 2025/2026/2027...”

I saw an interesting review today [1]: I don’t put any particular credence in their rankings of the various routers, but I found it delightful that this was the first point in the entire article:

* Ping spikes during gaming are usually caused by home network congestion, not ISP speed, and a gaming router with quality of service (QoS) or SQM directly fixes that

Dave would be so pleased that Bufferbloat and SQM are finally entering mainstream consciousness.

[1] https://www.analyticsinsight.net/gaming/best-gaming-routers-in-2026-for-low-latency-and-high-speed-performance

[Bloat] Re: SQM becoming mainstream (finally)

[Rich Brown]

Another one - with a heading of "More bandwidth won't fix a queue problem - the fix is a smarter queue”...  (make sure your ad blocker is turned on)

https://www.makeuseof.com/diagnosed-wi-fi-problems-with-free-test-that-speed-tests-cant-show/
There's a free test that reveals exactly why your internet feels slow — even when the speed test says it's fine
makeuseof.com


> On Jun 12, 2026, at 08:49, Rich Brown <richb.hanover@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I regularly receive email alerts from alerts.google.com for “bufferbloat” and “high ping time”. My inbox receives daily notes with links to Reddit articles asking, “could this really be bufferbloat?”, and occasional announcements of “the BEST gaming router of 2025/2026/2027...”
> 
> I saw an interesting review today [1]: I don’t put any particular credence in their rankings of the various routers, but I found it delightful that this was the first point in the entire article:
> 
> * Ping spikes during gaming are usually caused by home network congestion, not ISP speed, and a gaming router with quality of service (QoS) or SQM directly fixes that
> 
> Dave would be so pleased that Bufferbloat and SQM are finally entering mainstream consciousness.
> 
> [1] https://www.analyticsinsight.net/gaming/best-gaming-routers-in-2026-for-low-latency-and-high-speed-performance

[Bloat] Re: SQM becoming mainstream (finally)

[Sebastian Moeller]

Hi Rich,


> On Jun 13, 2026, at 19:09, Rich Brown <richb.hanover@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Another one - with a heading of "More bandwidth won't fix a queue problem - the fix is a smarter queue”...  (make sure your ad blocker is turned on)

Just pointing out they picked the fast.com <http://fast.com/> test as example fir a traditional throughput biased test and said it reported 6 ms as latency, totally ignoring the loaded latency number of 108 sitting just right of the idle latency number... Sure fast.com <http://fast.com/> is incomplete as it does not report upstream loaded latency (you can configure it to measure both down and up loaded latency, but it will report these in the same field, so overwriting the download loaded latency with the upload one*).

*) The issue has been reported to netflix in the past but they clearly for understandable reasons are more interested in simple reporting for the direction that is relevant for their business than trying  to figure out how to report one more number...


> 
> https://www.makeuseof.com/diagnosed-wi-fi-problems-with-free-test-that-speed-tests-cant-show/
> There's a free test that reveals exactly why your internet feels slow — even when the speed test says it's fine
> makeuseof.com
> 
> 
>> On Jun 12, 2026, at 08:49, Rich Brown <richb.hanover@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I regularly receive email alerts from alerts.google.com for “bufferbloat” and “high ping time”. My inbox receives daily notes with links to Reddit articles asking, “could this really be bufferbloat?”, and occasional announcements of “the BEST gaming router of 2025/2026/2027...”
>> 
>> I saw an interesting review today [1]: I don’t put any particular credence in their rankings of the various routers, but I found it delightful that this was the first point in the entire article:
>> 
>> * Ping spikes during gaming are usually caused by home network congestion, not ISP speed, and a gaming router with quality of service (QoS) or SQM directly fixes that
>> 
>> Dave would be so pleased that Bufferbloat and SQM are finally entering mainstream consciousness.
>> 
>> [1] https://www.analyticsinsight.net/gaming/best-gaming-routers-in-2026-for-low-latency-and-high-speed-performance
> 
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