<font face="arial" size="2"><p style="margin:0;padding:0;">Besides deployment in cerowrt and openwrt, what would really have high leverage is that the techniques developed in cerowrt's exploration (including fq_codel) get deployed where they should be deployed: in the access network systems: CMTS's, DSLAM's, Enterprise boundary gear, etc. from the major players.</p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;"> </p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;">Cerowrt's fundamental focus has been proving that the techniques really, really work at scale.</p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;"> </p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;">However, the fundamental "bloat-induced" experiences are actually occurring due to bloat at points where "fast meets slow". Cerowrt can't really fix the problem in the download direction (currently not so bad because of high download speeds relative to upload speeds in the US - that's in the CMTS's and DSLAM's.</p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;"> </p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;">What's depressing to me is that the IETF community spends more time trying to convince themselves that bloat is only a theoretical problem, never encountered in the field. In fact, every lab I've worked at (including the startup accelerator where some of my current company work) has had the network managers complaining to me that a single heavy FTP I'm running causes all of the other users in the site to experience terrible web performance. But when they call Cisco or F5 or whomever, they get told "there's nothing to do but buy complicated flow-based traffic management boxes to stick in line with the traffic (so they can "slow me down").</p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;"> </p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;">Bloat is the most common invisible elephant on the Internet. Just fixing a few access points is a start, but even if we fix all the access points so that uploads interfere less, there's still more impact this one thing can have.</p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;"> </p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;">So, by all means get this stuff into mainstream, but it's time to start pushing on the access network technology companies (and there are now open switches from Cumulus and even Arista to hack)</p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;"> </p>
<p style="margin:0;padding:0;"><br class="WM_COMPOSE_SIGNATURE_START" /><br class="WM_COMPOSE_SIGNATURE_END" /><br /><br />On Wednesday, May 21, 2014 7:42am, "Frits Riep" <riep@riepnet.com> said:<br /><br /></p>
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<p style="margin:0;padding:0;">> Thanks Dave for your responses. Based on this, it is very good that qos-scripts<br />> is available now through openwrt, and as I experienced, it provides a huge<br />> advantage for most users. I would agree prioritizing ping is in and of itself not<br />> the key goal, but based on what I've read so far, fq-codel provides dramatically<br />> better responsiveness for any interactive application such as web-browsing, voip,<br />> or gaming, so it qos-scripts would be advantageous for users like your mom if she<br />> were in an environment where she had a slow and shared internet connection. Is<br />> that a valid interpretation? I am interested in further understanding the<br />> differences based on the brief differences you provide. It is true that few<br />> devices provide DSCP marking, but if the latency is controlled for all traffic,<br />> latency sensitive traffic benefits tremendously even without prioritizing by l7<br />> (layer 7 ?). Is this interpretation also valid?<br />> <br />> Yes, your mom wouldn't be a candidate for setting up ceroWRT herself, but if it<br />> were set up for her, or if it could be incorporated into a consumer router with<br />> automatically determining speed parameters, she would benefit totally from the<br />> performance improvement. So the technology ultimately needs to be taken<br />> mainstream, and yes that is a huge task.<br />> <br />> Frits<br />> <br />> -----Original Message-----<br />> From: Dave Taht [mailto:dave.taht@gmail.com]<br />> Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2014 7:14 PM<br />> To: Frits Riep<br />> Cc: cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net<br />> Subject: Re: [Cerowrt-devel] Ideas on how to simplify and popularize bufferbloat<br />> control for consideration.<br />> <br />> On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 3:11 PM, Frits Riep <riep@riepnet.com> wrote:<br />> > The concept of eliminating bufferbloat on many more routers is quite<br />> > appealing. Reading some of the recent posts makes it clear there is a<br />> > desire to get to a stable code, and also to find a new platform<br />> > beyond the current Netgear. However, as good as some of the proposed<br />> > platforms maybe for developing and for doing all of the new<br />> > capabilities of CeroWRT, I also would like to propose that there also<br />> > be some focus on reaching a wider and less sophisticated audience to<br />> > help broaden the awareness and make control of bufferbloat more available and<br />> easier to attain for more users.<br />> <br />> I agree that reaching more users is important. I disagree we need to reach them<br />> with cerowrt. More below:<br />> <br />> ><br />> ><br />> > · It appears there is a desire to merge the code into an<br />> upcoming<br />> > OpenWRT barrier breaker release, which is excellent as it will make it<br />> > easier to fight buffer bloat on a wide range of platforms and provide<br />> > users with a much easier to install firmware release. I’d like to be<br />> > able to download luci-qos-scripts and sqm-scripts and have basic<br />> > bufferbloat control on a much greater variety of devices and to many<br />> > more users. From an awareness perspective this would be a huge win.<br />> > Is the above scenario what is being planned, is it likely to happen in the<br />> reasonable future?<br />> <br />> Yes, I'd submitted sqm for review upstream, got back a few comments. Intend to<br />> resubmit again when I get a chance.<br />> <br />> ><br />> > · From my perspective, it would be ideal to have this<br />> available to<br />> > many users in a more affordable platform, something like an 8mb flash<br />> > router like the TP-Link WDR-4300, which is otherwise a very capable<br />> > router with dual channels and good performance.<br />> ><br />> > · (I’ve managed to set up such a WDR-4300, with OpenWRT<br />> trunk,<br />> > figured how to telnet and install Luci, then luci-app-qos, and<br />> > qos-scripts and I thought the bufferbloat control was remarkable.)<br />> > How much better would it be if I were able to use luci-qos-scripts and<br />> sqm-scripts instead?<br />> <br />> You can easily add the .ipk files for sqm-scripts and luci-app-sqm to any release<br />> of openwrt. They are just scripts. They need some optional kernel modules and<br />> tools.<br />> <br />> I regard the qos-scripts as pretty good - the core differences from sqm are<br />> <br />> qos vs sqm<br />> ---------------<br />> both use fq_codel. :)<br />> hfsc vs htb # A wash, hfsc mostly behaves like htb ping optimized vs de-optimized<br />> # optimizing for ping looks good in benchmarks but it's silly in the real world<br />> (l7) classification vs dscp # clear win to qos here, nearly nothing uses dscp no<br />> framing compensation vs comprehensive framing compensation # win here for sqm no<br />> alternate queue models vs many alternate queue models # with fq_codel the winner,<br />> who cares?<br />> fits in 4mb flash vs barely fits in 4mb flash<br />> <br />> The real killer problem for qos-scripts, for me, was that they didn't do ipv6. I'd<br />> like to see that fixed, at the very least.<br />> <br />> <br />> ><br />> > · For these target users, they need simplicity, good<br />> performance,<br />> > ease of setup and affordability. They are not able to deal with the<br />> > routing between subnets on wireless, IPv6 setup, and any complexities<br />> > introduced by DNSSEC. Marketing the advantages of bufferbloat alone<br />> > requires lots of education and publicity (and as we have seen there<br />> > are many misleading posts by seemingly persuasive nay-sayers that it is all<br />> smoke and mirrors.<br />> <br />> Well, my intent is to make the successful bits of technology widely available.<br />> They are widely available. And being adopted everywhere. Win.<br />> <br />> As for the additional complexities, well, they will get less complex over time.<br />> <br />> In one respect, they are a stake in the ground. I have high hopes for the eventual<br />> success of hnetd and mdns proxy services, although they are alpha and nearly<br />> unusable right now, some are making substantial investments into them.<br />> <br />> In another the additional complexities of cero - like routing vs bridging - are<br />> there to further the research into fixing wifi technologies - which we haven't<br />> really even started yet. I'm increasingly convinced we need to do make-wifi-fast<br />> as a separate, focused project, building on a stable base.<br />> <br />> > · Would it be possible to have a simplified release of CeroWRT<br />> (in<br />> > terms of setup, and features), make It available for a reliable and<br />> > affordable platform, and publicize it and have it reach hopefully a<br />> > much wider audience? This could potentially be through the OpenWRT channels.<br />> <br />> Possible yes. Affordable, no. Given that this has been a nearly full time project<br />> for me, for the last 38 months, with nearly zero revenue, I have no intent or<br />> interest in gaining anything other than knowledgable, clued users that want to<br />> advance the state of the art. My mom doesn't run cerowrt, nor do I want her to.<br />> <br />> If someone dropped ~1m/year on the project, that could change, but at present<br />> levels of funding I'd be better off working at mcdonalds. Even if funding appeared<br />> from the sky I'd rather spend it on R&D than GUI...<br />> <br />> Certainly IF there was some cost model that made sense, awesome! let's go for<br />> world domination!<br />> <br />> I continue to pursue the grant<br />> route, but the only thing that resonates even slightly with potential funders is<br />> not speed but security issues, which give me nightmares. Another model that works<br />> is actually making and selling a router, but that requires up front capital and<br />> entry into a very tight, profit-limited market.<br />> <br />> Biggest problem we have is supporting ONLY one router, even-semi-well, is a PITA.<br />> <br />> Adding a new one costs more. I'm now on my 4th day of trying to make the archer<br />> work. That's 6k of my life I'll never have back. And the ath10k in it sucks, and<br />> working to make that work well is not something I want to be doing due to the<br />> binary blob wifi firmware.<br />> <br />> I'm all in favor of handing off future cerowrt development to a nonprofit of<br />> interested users, and sitting back and focusing on fixing just the bits I care<br />> about, if anyone is interested in forming one...<br />> <br />> > · Part of the reason why Tomato had been so popular is that<br />> the<br />> > firmware upgrade, install, configuration, and management was well<br />> > within the capabilities of the average weekend hacker, and there were<br />> > compelling features and reliability vs the factory firmwares at the time.<br />> <br />> Yep. dd-wrt is the same. And various downstream users like buffalo, meraki etc.<br />> <br />> I'm totally happy that they exist and have a working market.<br />> <br />> > · Even installing OpenWRT, especially Trunk, and finding,<br />> > downloading and enabling packages, while very powerful, and flexible,<br />> > is still quite complex to someone who does not spend a lot of time<br />> > reading wiki’s and release notes.<br />> <br />> Yes, CeroWrt is an improvement on OpenWrt in that regard. But it isn't enough.<br />> Doing serious UI improvements and simplification IS necessary, and that's not my<br />> bag. The EFF is making noises about doing something with the front end of openwrt<br />> and/or cero in the next year or so (see their owtech list for more details), that<br />> also goes after the security issue.<br />> <br />> > I’d be interested in feedback on these thoughts.<br />> <br />> There you go. I LOVE that we have a happy userbase, and love what we've<br />> accomplished, and have loved being here to help make it happen, and love that lots<br />> of people want to get it more out there to more people, it's gratifying as hell,<br />> and there are a lot of negatives too, like chasing bugs for months on end...<br />> <br />> ... but after we freeze, I need a vacation and to do something else for a while.<br />> <br />> I'm presently planning on spending the summer working on something that pays, and<br />> on improving ns3 with the GSOC, and testing a deployment of cerowrts on a modest<br />> scale, and working on a new/improved rate limiter integrated with fq_codel. And<br />> only updating cero for CVEs or major new features.<br />> <br />> That's a full plate.<br />> <br />> If someone else wants to step up to maintain or continue to push cerowrt forward<br />> in some direction or another, I'm all for it.<br />> <br />> It's kind of my hope a clear winner on the chipset front will emerge and we can<br />> move to that, but even if that happens it will be months and months before it<br />> could be considered stable...<br />> <br />> <br />> <br />> ><br />> ><br />> > Frits Riep<br />> ><br />> ><br />> ><br />> ><br />> > _______________________________________________<br />> > Cerowrt-devel mailing list<br />> > Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net<br />> > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel<br />> ><br />> <br />> <br />> <br />> --<br />> Dave Täht<br />> <br />> NSFW:<br />> https://w2.eff.org/Censorship/Internet_censorship_bills/russell_0296_indecent.article<br />> <br />> _______________________________________________<br />> Cerowrt-devel mailing list<br />> Cerowrt-devel@lists.bufferbloat.net<br />> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/cerowrt-devel<br />></p>
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