[Cerowrt-devel] Field Report: Switching to bql-31 at home

[Richard Brown]

Dave,

Thanks for the speedy responses. I should note that I had  a bunch of fun trying out bql-31: we all knew it wasn't ready for prime time, and now we know more of the symptoms :-) I look forward to taking another whack at this (probably this weekend).

I agree with everything, the note below adds detail where needed.

re: My connection. I'm using ADSL (Fairpoint) with ~2.8mbps down, 0.7 mbps up.

re: load on wireless. No, I did not do any organized load testing of the wireless network. I did download a few files, ran speedtest.net<http://speedtest.net>, etc. though. In that fairly informal test, CeroWrt and DD-WRT performed substantially the same.

re: mDNS over routed subnets. A stable avahi reflector really will make a difference. (I should say that I'm a big fan of mDNS. I cut my networking teeth on AppleTalk, whose Name Binding Protocol was the prototype for mDNS. At Dartmouth College, we had ~150 zones - one for each building. Also at Dartmouth, I wrote an AppleTalk NBP-to-IP translator that gave a stable AppleTalk name to an IP address, anticipating the dyndns.org<http://dyndns.org> facility...)

Then mDNS worked, but required rebooting most equipment (Mac computers & printer) to get it going the first time.

I think I default to an overly long dhcp server lease.

I'll be attentive next time I try this, to see if this is reproducible.

3) The worst problem was that the OSX computers and the printer all reverted to CeroWrt-guest SSID unbidden.

Now, THAT is weird.

Yeah. I will check this carefully with the next install.

4) I installed the snmpd package. This worked a bit, except that retrieving two interface data samples in quick succession (say, retrieving ifInOctets a few seconds apart) would show a rate of zero between the samples, even if lots of data was really flowing. 30-second samples seemed to work as expected. Does the interface not update the SNMP counters with every packet?

The interface does, but the snmp daemon probably has a polling interval set to high values. I'll look into it, however
most pollers do tend to run at 30 second to 5 minute intervals.

Interesting. I have not observed this with the snmp daemon of DD-WRT. Yes, I'd like to hear what you find. I may install the current OpenWrt as well to see if that exhibits the same symptom.

> I realize this is bucking the worldwide 'standard' of one network for all
> interfaces in the home, but I need it for the testing... and it is certainly interesting
> and revealing as
> to how much this is counter to people's expectations.
>
> IPv6 re-introduces this problem, too.

And it's forging new pathways. You're right that home routers may need to subnet for performance. My observations are all about making the "other stuff" work.

> How are you connecting to your office? VPN?

I fire up the VPN from my laptop into the office, not from my home network to the office. (No need for my wife and son to have that access.) In order for the PPTP software to work, the home and office subnets need to be different.

thx for giving it a shot, and giving me a grip on your expectations. I'm emphatically not a mac user...

As I said, I was happy to do this. I realize that the things I am reporting here are quite distinct from the goals of fixing bufferbloat. So I'm content simply to report them so that they're recorded. (At my company, our unofficial motto is, "We promise not to fix it if we don't know it's broke.")

Best regards,

Rich
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