CAKE not working for WiFi device when only download limit is set

[ebuckland81]

While contemplating on the discussion here

Hardware Acceleration issues

I got to wondering… Bufferbloat. I’m wondering if setting a limit on both the inbound and outbound side of things will make a practical difference? If the WAN is slower than the LAN connection, typically, your ISP is going to limit the ingress of data to somewhere around what you’ve contracted them to provide. If they’re unaware of anything you’re doing in your own router, you don’t really want your router to become an artificial limit to the flow of incoming data do you? On the other hand,…

I found that setting an upload limit only did not actually make any difference on speed and bufferbloat tests for the download part for my WiFi Android device (OnePlus 10 Pro).

The download is affected first when I set the upload limit as well.

The corresponding tests (running manually installed speedtest) from the Route10 itself shows up with and without speed reduction and latency improvements as would be expected. See here: https://forum.alta.inc/t/hardware-acceleration-issues/4156/21?u=ebuckland81

Results from Waveform for Android WiFi device:

Nominal...

With CAKE 602/-, i.e. download set, upload left blank...

With CAKE 602/602...

Any ideas? I guess this is not expected behavior for a network client device…

Edit: A few minutes later, I realized this may be related to another very recent issue. Seems like this was related to the Hardware acceleration setting for the Route10 WAN port being out of sync. Toggling the setting, Enabled → Alternate → Disabled → Enabled, seems to provide sensible results again. This was noted here as well, though with different outcome/symptom:

@Alta-MikeD

What happens if you change acceleration to disabled? Any change in download performance? It should automatically get disabled in the config when CAKE is enabled, so I’m not expecting much of a difference, but curious.

and

@Reidster1985

That does seem to have made a difference.

So, problem solved for me, but still something to investigate in terms of why the Hardware acceleration setting gets out of sync while applying CAKE settings, and why it only adversely affects the network client device and not the Route10 itself.

[ebuckland81]

Oh, well, unfortunately I came to conclusions to quickly…there were more to it. It’s a fair bit mind boggling, so bear with me.

Settings for download limit only, with Hardware acceleration setting left at Enabled (after some fire-at-will-toggling as per the initial post) did not survive a reboot of Route10 and AP6 Pro. Speedtest results for my WiFi Android device are back at nominal, which is not expected with CAKE download limit only set.

Now, things get a bit out of hand…When trying to toggle Enabled → Disabled → Enabled it does not work as intended back at Enabled. Only the setting Disabled leads to CAKE being properly functional on the download side.

But, when passing Alternate on the way back from Enabled, it works on Enabled. However, this does not survive when toggling repeatedly Enabled → Disabled → Enabled.

Then, when passing Alternate on the way to and from Disabled, it works back at Enabled and also repeatedly survives further toggling back and forth between Enabled and Disabled. I have repeatedly reproduced this behavior for consecutive reboots.

Once again, all for the CAKE download case only. And, just to mention, I waited some 15-30 seconds between each settings change, and also added a speed test after each change.

Also, I noticed that the setting for upload limit only works as intended (as well as upload and download combined). And it doesn’t get impacted by a reboot either.

So, summing up the findings for your further troubleshooting:

• CAKE works as expected at Route10 level.

For WiFi client:

• CAKE upload and download setting together works as intended.
• CAKE upload setting only works as intended.

For WiFi client, download setting only:

• CAKE download setting only is no good with a prior Hardware acceleration Enabled/Alternate setting.
• A fix is to toggle the Hardware acceleration setting to Disabled (but is probably unwanted as I guess it might come in handy for the upload part?!)
• A temporary fix is to toggle Enabled → (Alternate → ) Disabled → Alternate → Enabled.
• The temporary fix does not survive a reboot.

WAN is set to DHCP by the way.