Bufferbloat... can a UDM-Pro solve my issue

Networking & Firewalls
1

Hello,

I think I have a bufferbloat issue and have been scouring the internet for weeks looking for solutions.
I’m pretty tech orientated but I’m a newb at networking so please excuse if anything I say is incorrect or sounds dumb.

Quick rundown about my current setup.
3 Amplifi HDs, ethernet backhaul
150 down / 15 up (I can’t increase this)
25 WiFi devices, 10 Wired devices and growing

Issue:
When my QNAP NAS backsup offsite it takes all of my upload bandwidth.
(I’m only backing up changed files and I have compression on)
I don’t want to hard limit it because when nothing is in use it can have it all, but as soon as something wants bandwidth I want to throttle the QNAP down and make it low priority.
From all my searching it seems to have pointed me to a bufferbloat issue and I need QoS and/or SQM to solve it.

The solutions I’ve found are:

1.Get a EdgeRouter - I like the easy to use slick Amplifi HD interface so I don’t want to bridge it and loose all the funtionallity.

2.Put an EdgeSwitch in front of my Amplifi to do nothing more than QoS. Kind of looks like there is a significant learning curve to it. (and I’ll get no help from Ubiquiti I already know that).

3.Use a NetGate in transparent mode. NetGate said it’s an unsupported feature, so again I’m on my own with it. I watch a Lawrence youtube video on it. It was great, Tom really knows his stuff! Well beyond what I think I’d be able to setup correctly though.

4.UDM-Pro? seems to have a slick easy to use interface. The issue is I can’t figure out if it can do QoS and SQM good enough to solve my issue. Some forum posts and reviews say the QoS is too basic. Ubiquiti says it has the same SQM as the EdgeRouter. But Ubiquiti won’t make a product recommendation and told me to ask random users on their forum… which is super bizarre that a manufacture won’t recommend their own product for an application… every company I’ve ever dealt with over the years big and small, I’m never come across one that won’t recommend their own product, but that’s another topic :slight_smile:
With the UDM-Pro I’d have loose the Amplifis and get APs and Switches, which I’m prepared to do and get into the prosumer category, but I just can’t figure out if it will do that job.

I saw Tom’s videos on UDM-Pro and NetGate transparent mode stuff and figured this might be the place to go for the answer since he (and maybe others here) are familiar with all those options above and what would be best without me needing a computer engineering degree.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

2

I don’t think pfsense in transparent would help, I would replace the firewall with a pfsense.

1 Like
3

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the reply!
Ah nuts. That would mean I’d have to bridge my Amplifi HD and loose all it’s easy app functionality.

Do you know if the UDM-Pro is capable of dealing with bufferbloat so I can still keep that modern easy to use app feel for my network?

Or do you know if the UDM-Pro “will” be able to deal with bufferbloat effectively in the future?
(I’m not sure if it’s in the pipeline for features and honestly wouldn’t know what to look for if it was on the list)

I’m glad I finally found these forums! Sorry for the dumb questions, they are probably super basic compared to what you normally do :slight_smile:

4

I hold little hope that any Ubiquiti firewall will get better features. There has been an open request for over 5 years now just to get the ability to have multiple IP’s on the WAN.

1 Like
5

Hahaha little hope. Well I don’t want to wait 5 years for fix my bufferbloat issue :slight_smile:

So it sound like even a UDM-Pros QoS/SQM won’t even fix my issue.

Thanks again for the replies and have a great weekend!

6

Well, the request has been in for at least five years, but we still don’t have the feature…lol

7

@Lain I was curious to know how you determined you have bufferbloat ? Did you use dlsreports, observation or something else ?

8

Because I want to allow my qnap all the bandwidth when nothing else needs it but then throttle it as soon as something else so I knew I needed some sort of priority que for my traffic. (The amplifi hd has it but only for WiFi devices not wired).

So I started searching google for how to do that. That led me to QoS topics which lead me to SQM which lead me to bufferbloat which led me to dslreports. I then ran a dslreport on our fastest wired desktop and got a D rating for bufferbloat. Leading me to believe I have a bufferbloat issue.

So not being a network guru, it was really just weeks of online reading and then seeing the dslreport D rating. I could be totally wrong.

It sounds so simple it really just want to prioritize my traffic by IP or MAC address. QNAP low priority, SmartHome stuff high priority, everything else normal. The rabbit hole researching it took me down was never ending :slight_smile:

9

Ah ok, I’ve run those dslreports but I get some strange responses.

I’ve been looking to do something similar by deploying Traffic Shaping in Pfsense but it needs some grey matter to be applied.

10

Ya, I was hoping to pay a few hundred dollars and put a box between my modem and router and just click a button and call it day :slight_smile: