Bufferbloat

Bufferbloat is the undesirable latency that comes from a router or other network equipment buffering too much data.

The Bufferbloat projects provide a webspace for addressing chaotic and laggy network performance. We have a number of projects in flight:

• What Can I Do About Bufferbloat? If you have bad latency/lag, or someone has told you there is Bufferbloat in your network, this page lists several steps you can take to measure the bloat in your network, and to solve it. See also the Bufferbloat FAQs for more information.
• The Bufferbloat Project has largely addressed latency associated with too much buffering in routers. The cake algorithm (and its predecessors CoDel and fq_codel algorithms) are the first fundamental advances in the state of the art of network Active Queue Management in many, many years. These algorithms have been deployed in millions of computers, and reduce the induced delay from competing traffic on a bottleneck link to the order of 20 msec.
• The Make-Wi-Fi-Fast Project, with many of the same team members as the Bufferbloat project, intends to improve Wi-Fi's speed and use of the spectrum by inserting CoDel/fq_codel into the Wi-Fi queues, and actively measuring the power required for successful transmission, in order to minimize contention and interference on the RF channel. As of early 2017, our efforts to remove queueing latency and add Airtime Fairness to Wi-Fi stacks have borne fruit. See the Make Wi-Fi Fast Status page.
• The Request to FCC for Saner Software Policies is a response to Docket ET 15-170 which appears to require vendors to lock down the software in Wi-Fi routers, prohibiting experimentation and field testing of new techniques. Read the Press Release and our Letter to the FCC

These projects are all united by a desire to:

• Gather together experts to tackle networking queue management and system problem(s), particularly those that affect wireless networks, home gateways, and edge routers
• Spread the word to correct basic assumptions regarding goodput and good buffering on the laptop, home gateway, core routers and servers.
• Produce tools to demonstrate and diagnose the problem
• Make experiments in advanced congestion management
• Produce patches to popular operating systems at the device driver, queuing, and TCP/ip layers to fix the problems.

There are several mailing lists, git repositories, and people here that are attempting to address the Bufferbloat and making Wi-Fi fast issues at various levels. We welcome you to join us in this endeavor!

Help Us

We welcome all manner of help, either by writing code, or installing and testing our firmware in a wide variety of test situations.