[ryao]

You don’t need a speed test website to see this problem. Just run a ping on your own while doing a big download that saturates your connection and bufferbloat will happen unless there is some active queue management to prevent the ping packets from waiting in the queue behind the download packets. This happens anytime that there is a fast/slow transition in the internet and the slow connection cannot keep up. To prevent packet loss, the packets will be buffered, which works well for short spikes, but prolonged activity will result in a noticeable backlog and if buffers are allowed to be sufficiently big, you can get arbitrarily long delays, which are visible in ping times.

The worst that I have ever seen was about 30 seconds when visiting a foreign country where bufferbloat was occurring at peering links. The bufferbloat in peering links is likely visible from western countries if you ping residential IPs in developing countries and monitor the ping times over days. Some parts of the day will have very high ping times while others will not. The high ping times will be the buffer bloat.

In most western countries, the bufferbloat typically occurs at people’s home internet connections. As is the case in all cases of buffer bloat, the solution is to be willing to drop packets when the connection is saturated. If you limit the bandwidth just below what the connection can handle, you can do active queue management to solve the problem.

That said, I suggest you stop posting replies. Your crusade against the idea of buffer bloat makes you look bad to anyone with enough networking knowledge to understand what bufferbloat is. I also strongly suspect I wrote an explanation that you will take zero time to understand and rather than take my advice, you will post another reply to continue your crusade. :/

[esseph]

You are 100% correct.

It is not yet a "solved" problem, but 10-15 years have started to make a dent and get better tools to both observe and act on the problem.

This is seen everywhere from the inclusion of CAKE ( https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/tc-cake.8.html ) in some CPE / home router, but the use of fq_codel ( https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man8/tc-fq_codel.8.html ) in routers along the way.

Other ISPs have to go even farther, because "content" might be 80-120ms away, and the ability to be more aggressive or less aggressive in tuning certain parameters can have a large impact on overall customer Quality of Experience. If there are any LEO hops along the way, problems with TCP and delayed signaling as a byproduct can also make throughout tank while latency spikes.

DPDK and VPP have contributed to a lot of new networking devices to help observe and act on traffic.

Everytime you go from a big pipe to a small pipe (higher data rate to lower data rate) connection you will see this issue at varying levels.

[ryao]

Do you have links to information on what DPDK and VPP are doing in the area of bufferbloat? I have not kept up with them since I cannot use them in my day to day life, but I would love to update myself on the subject.

By the way, when I wrote in another comment that bufferbloat was solved, I meant it in the same way that IPv4 exhaustion is solved by IPv6. We have the ability to deploy solutions that largely fix things, but whether we do is another matter. You are right to say that the past 10-15 years have started to make a dent in the problem. I had not meant to suggest otherwise.

[esseph]

Take a look at any of the QoE type vendors out there right now.

https://www.bequant.com/

[commandersaki]

Thanks for the reply and confirming what I had already said earlier in regards to detecting telltale signs of bufferbloat. In case you were aware, a controlled experiment to exhibit bufferbloat doesn't translate to users being materially affected.

The worst that I have ever seen was about 30 seconds when visiting a foreign country where bufferbloat was occurring at peering links. The bufferbloat in peering links is likely visible from western countries if you ping residential IPs in developing countries and monitor the ping times over days. Some parts of the day will have very high ping times while others will not. The high ping times will be the buffer bloat.

Out of curiosity, did you have full observability of these peering links, or is this a hypothesis? I could think of a few scenarios where alternative explanations could explain what you're seeing.

In most western countries, the bufferbloat typically occurs at people’s home internet connections.

Says who? How is this measured? Do we have actual numbers on people experiencing real bufferbloat issues that are affecting their service?

That said, I suggest you stop posting replies. Your crusade against the idea of buffer bloat makes you look bad to anyone with enough networking knowledge to understand what bufferbloat is. I also strongly suspect I wrote an explanation that you will take zero time to understand and rather than take my advice, you will post another reply out of ignorance. :/

Look, I will cordially suggest a more tenable approach: consider disengaging from this thread, your vacuous and vapid post hasn't really brought anything to the table.

Edit: Seems I can't reply to the child comment, so I'll just say, you should've used your own advice and not reply. There's nothing of substance and you're still continuing with your daft misinterpretation of my take. I'll leave it at that.

[ryao]

Overanalysis for the sake of denying the existence of whatever you want is cliche. It does not matter how complete the information on a subject is, since you will just post more pointless questions, whose relevance is specious, for the sake of claiming there are non-existent issues in understanding. The last time I saw this used involved a very loquacious guy who denied Darwin’s theory of evolution. It can also be used to claim the world is flat.

I was being generous by advising you to stop posting, since the more you post asinine things, the worse you look. In the past, I have taken the liberty to do amateur psychoanalysis of people who post bizarre things online based on a psychology class I took in college. If I keep responding, it will only be to get you to post more so that I can work out what is wrong with you for my own curiosity. I am probably not the only one thinking this.

[commandersaki]

I was being generous by advising you to stop posting, since the more you post asinine things, the worse you look. In the past, I have taken the liberty to do amateur psychoanalysis of people who post bizarre things online based on a psychology class I took in college. If I keep responding, it will only be to get you to post more so that I can work out what is wrong with you for my own curiosity. I am probably not the only one thinking this.

Look, let's call this what it is: gatekeeping. Furthermore you deflect and avoid answering a real question. I don't think you actually understood the crux of what I'm saying and instead resorted to ad hominems and gatekeeping, but seeing as it went over your head, I will pose the question: does bufferbloat have more than a marginal affect on the Internet experience of end users in real world conditions (not in a controlled experiment), furthermore does it affect a significant population, as of today in the 2020s as opposed to circa 2010? I'm saying no to both; a good way to gauge whether it is still relevant is to see publications in networking conferences and journals or even discussions by the *NOG, and really it's just not there. I know there's obsession over CoDel etc. and I used to follow the late Dave Taht's evangelising about the issue, but put simply the numbers don't add up - anyways a simpler solution would simply to prioritise ICMP and UDP flows over TCP. Anyways, this is not your imagined crusade against bufferbloat, it's just a pragmatic assessment. I'll leave it at that, rather than deflect and attack, consider applying some emotional intelligence.

[ryao]

The problem of buffer bloat is one of many issues that affect internet users. When I visited China and pings to my VPN in the US jumped from 200ms to 30 seconds depending on the time of day, bufferbloat was severely affecting me. That could only be described as bufferbloat, since the packets were suffering from store and forward overhead to an excessive degree and my pings were able to measure it across times of day.

Historically and likely still in the present day (but not in my household as we use AQM now), whenever one person in a household does a large download, internet latencies shoot up for everyone in the household, which is also bufferbloat. Having to wait hundreds of ms per round trip brings us back to the 56k dialup days and the performance impact on interactive traffic is horrific. It is enough to make VoIP unusable. As others have told you, there can be other issues at the same time, but bufferbloat makes the issues worse. I cannot speak for others on the extent to which they are afflicted by buffer bloat, but adopting AQM had a night and day difference in performance of the internet connection in my house, since I often do big data transfers that previously would slow down basic web browsing for everyone in my house, myself included.

As for your conjecture that extant problems are visible in recent journal publications, journals have a selection bias. The idea that a problem’s existence is indicated by the degree to which people are publishing papers on it in journals is fallacious since the papers need to not just provide something new, but also be interesting to those running the journal (i.e. make them think that the papers would elevate the status if their journal and help them get increased readership, provided that they are not a junk journal that will publish literally anything). On top of that, the work needs to be funded. Bufferbloat, which is largely considered a solved problem and which predominantly affects the less affluent these days, is not something that will get much attention in journals since nobody in academia seeks funding for something that they do not think they can improve or publish.

Finally, I did not use any ad hominem remarks toward you, as my remarks had focused entirely on what you wrote. I did write that any further replies would likely be done to get you to keep talking so I can play my old game of “figure out what is wrong with someone posting bizarre things on the internet”. About 30% of the population is mentally ill and thus when someone is posting bizarre things online, it is often the result of mental illness. Figuring out which mental illness is often the only reason responding to bizarre posts is worthwhile (as it is both an intellectual challenge and a public service). This contradicts your remarks suggesting that there is no point to my replies, to use my words rather than yours. It is not an ad hominem remark to say that I am likely to do this analysis. Posting the results of the analysis would be, but it would be grounded in fact and would likely be done to suggest professional help for X condition, if my amateur analysis identifies a condition that could benefit from professional help. Honestly, I think the world would be a better place if more people who studied psychology (even 1 class like I did) played armchair psychologist when others persist in a pattern of bizarre remarks and refer those who need professional help to trained professionals.

[commandersaki]

When I visited China and pings to my VPN in the US jumped from 200ms to 30 seconds depending on the time of day, bufferbloat was severely affecting me. That could only be described as bufferbloat, since the packets were suffering from store and forward overhead to an excessive degree and my pings were able to measure it across times of day.

I think you suffer from tunnel vision here, particularly if you ascribe the issue to your ISP which would have magnitudes more capacity than subscriber links, even if oversubscribed. For Bufferbloat to be an issue in that regard they'd have to be a choke point, in which case there's actual seriously problems at that point. I'd expect being China there's a lot more going on anyway with GFW and poor routing.

Bufferbloat, which is largely considered a solved problem and which predominantly affects the less affluent these days, is not something that will get much attention in journals since nobody in academia seeks funding for something that they do not think they can improve or publish.

I feel this is the point you missed when having a conniption; I didn't say bufferbloat didn't exist, I said it was overhyped. I would like you to reflect on these two views and see how they differ significantly, as it clearly went over your head on your crusade to crucify me.

About 30% of the population is mentally ill and thus when someone is posting bizarre things online, it is often the result of mental illness. Figuring out which mental illness is often the only reason responding to bizarre posts is worthwhile

Sure happy to say I suffer mental illness. I have been morbid less than 0.5% of the time in the last 15 years, otherwise it is in remission. What's actually bizarre is thinking there is one type of mental illness that makes people somehow unhinged or can't carry a debate because you simply do not like what they say, it's clear that your one psychology class which you use as a crutch to spout nonsense shows you're clearly out of depth here, you should seriously stop; it's also abundantly clear you use it as a guise to gatekeep and to condescend; if you can't debate or argue in good faith, I would put forth the advice you keep trying to palm off - do not continue posting, disengage.

But if I didn't sway you with above, stop and at least read the HN guidelines; this isn't the other social media platforms you're used to.

[ryao]

I do not think mental illness is the cause of people posting wrong remarks, but when they post remarks that strike me as particularly bizarre, as yours have here, I think consideration of mental illness itself is worthwhile, productive and interesting. I have been very kind from the start, when I informed you that you were making yourself look bad. Being curious about what causes you to persist in such behavior is also a form of kindness, especially when such curiosity leads to a recommendation of professional help, although those who need help are not always willing to get it.

I will point out that you were not interested in debating in good faith, as your sole purpose is to make the point that people should treat buffer bloat as a theoretical issue that does not actually affect people, with the explanation for every incident of buffer bloat always being something else. Everything you wrote has been consistent with that. You even applied a pattern of overanalysis to the discussion that can be used to claim the contrary to anything. Your apparent need to deny the existence of a well known issue is bizarre. You would be much happier right now if you had dropped the subject.

By the way, peering links between the greater China area and the rest of the world are notoriously bad due to limited capacity. China in particular has three tier 1 networks that all refuse to upgrade peering links between each other in a timely manner, and the peering links between them and the rest of the world are often just as bad as the peering links inside of China. In order to get a decent connection there in 2016, I had to forcibly do my own routing through VMs in data centers in Shanghai, Tokyo and others to control the links used, after much trial and error, yet there were still periods where the links were horrendous and surprisingly, the issue was not always exclusive to China according to my testing between VMs on various data centers. I was visiting family for a month, yet needed a decent connection to work remotely, so I spent an entire week non-stop studying the connectivity and experimenting with ways of improving my VPN connectivity. I also had proof that the GFW was not where problems occurred, since my tcpdump pcap files taken at VMs in Shanghai and Tokyo showed the packets traversing the GFW. I also had reproduced similar performance issues using VMs in other countries, such as Japan and Singapore, where there is no GFW, as part of attempts to identify paths over which I could forcibly route my traffic via iptables rules. It is obvious to me that you will continue to deny bufferbloat was a problem and instead blame something else, yet as others have already explained to you, bufferbloat makes problems worse. After a delay of a few hundred ms, my VoIP session did not care if the packets were delivered or not, since at that point, the packets were useless, yet enormous buffers would delay them and other traffic well past a sane expiry instead of dropping it, to the detriment of all trying to use the peering links.