Single Youtube upload killing Internet traffic

I have a Peplink Balance One. Whenever I’m uploading a Youtube video, all other connections through the same provider bocome very slow. Internet surfing even times out sometimes.

QoS sections does not have any option to prioritize web surfing over a Youtube upload. Most routers can detect downloads and uploads through HTTP/HTTPS versus regular web surfing. It is just a matter of keeping track of how much data was sent/received thorugh a single connection. If its more than some KB, it’s probably a download/upload. So it is easy to attribute a high priority to web surfing and low priority to downloads and uploads.

You could try using an outbound policy to help. Put TCP 80 and 443 in an outbound policy with “least used” or “lowest latency”. That will tell the router that when one link becomes saturated, send this traffic to the least congested link. YouTube videos themselves are Http and Https traffic. Without doing application level packet inspection, the router can’t tell the difference. They all look like tcp connections going to the same place. Yes, the router does seem to look into content headers to determine certain types of video traffic, but that type of identification mechanism is very limited.

BUT, you can teach the router what a YouTube video is and how to identify it. You can manage traffic to anywhere provided you know some information about the destination. In this case, you know that your upload is destined to some server in the YouTube.com namespace. Create a rule for traffic to that domain name and manage it how you want.

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Thank you for your answer. I’m already using “lowest latency” for everything. Most traffic will go through the other connection when one of them is uploading videos to Youtube. But I don’t think this is the best solution.

Many cheap routers distinguish large uploads/downloads without application level inspection at all. It is just a matter of measuring how much traffic passed through a TCP connection on port 80 or 443. If it is less than, for instance, 512 KB, it is treated as web traffic. If it is more than 512KB, it is treated as a large download/upload.

I can’t really teach the router what a Youtube video is because QoS does not support destination based rules, neither rules based on the amount of traffic that went thorugh the single TCP connection. I don’t think that it is acceptable on a U$ 500,00 router. Peplink must improve that.

If you always use the same device for uploading to YouTube - you can use the bandwidth controls. Put the device doing the upload into the guest group and limit the amount of upload bandwith it is able to consume.

Another way to do it is to not allow anyone to consume the entire link using the bandwith reservations. This set of rules should only kick in when the link is under a full load - so it seems the better solution as it should protect the WAN from ever being saturated.

It is true that the router won’t know what a YouTube video is, but you it can determine YouTube traffic via destination IP/host name. You should be able to use the outbound policy rules to tell the router how to treat YouTube traffic (you can even go down to treating it differently based on the source IP of the device talking to YouTube).

I do think that there are adequate features to help solve your problem. Granted they may not be exactly what you are accustomed to from previous routers.

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Your first solution would always limit the device. I want to allow devices to use all available bandwidth if they are alone. QoS should kick in only when the connection is saturated.

The other solution is good, but I don’t think there is any way to make these rules kick in only on full load. “Individual Bandwidth Limit” is always active.

Maybe Peplink could at least put minimum and maximum limits for each device individually. Even a US$ 40 TP-Link router can do that. And it supports up to 4 WAN ports without charging more for that.

I have one of those 40 dollar routers you mention. I used it while my Peplink was being repaired. I unplugged it as soon as the Peplink came back. It is the least configurable piece of network gear. I have had it for over two years and there has yet to be a firmware update. What features it ships with is all it will ever have. It is not even reliable enough to use as a switch. This is just my opinion since we are comparing them. I say that you should use what works best for your needs.

Fwiw- I don’t think QOS is really what you want. I would think that a SQM type of setup would probably work better. It is a real time queue management capability that is application aware. There is a guy on this forum trying to use it to solve buffer bloat - which I believe is what your issue boils down to. Have u tried forking around with the WAN buffer size? Lowering this value basically keeps all the traffic control for TCP connections managed at the endpoints.

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I know the TP-Link is bad. I used it for a few months. They still couldn’t make a firmware that won’t require a reboot after a few days. It lacks SSL on the web interface. It lacks a decent shell (but so does Peplink). It lacks application level QoS and many other stuff.

Peplink is better in most aspects, but TP-Link actually allows one to create many groups and set both guaranteed and maximum bandwidth for each group or each device individually. So it is a shame that Peplink is limited to 3 groups and only guarateed bandwidth for groups.

I don’t think QoS and SQM are different things. SQM is actually a way to achieve good QoS. For instance, in Tomato firmware one can choose the queue management algorithm.

Asus has the best QoS I used so far. It has a Trendmicro DPI engine which detects many common applications, including Youtube, Netflix, and so on. It is possible to adjust priority in many ways: category of applications, applications, devices, etc. It is not perfect, but I could upload Youtube videos and surf or even watch Netflix at the same time.

I didn’t find WAN buffer size setting.

Delete the end of the URL in your address bar and type in support.cgi for the page name. Lots of fun stuff to play with. The URL will look like cgi-bin/MANGA/index.cgi at the end.

Edited to show the correct end of URL.

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Thanks, I didn’t know about that.

These little routers are pretty amazing. They aren’t perfect, but they are constantly working on new features and improvements. The community has a huge role in helping steer the engineering team. Every idea I have seen mentioned in the forum is discussed and considered. The best bit is the transparency and accessibility of their team. I have not seen a consumer grade router of this quality with this level of support. I have probably had about 10-15 routers over the last 10 years. I think the Peplink was a bargain for what you get. I really hope in time the company exceeds your expectations.

For what it’s worth, my cheap-o multi wan router also had issues with dropped packets, unresponsive UI (inner iframe wouldn’t load), and frequent necisity to reboot. That coupled with the rubbish outbound routing - I was very happy to get my Balance 30 back🤗

My B30 had WAN port 3 go bad. I was only using 2 WANs, but the warranty was expiring soon - so I sent it in and they sent me another one as soon as they got mine. I think the total time without it was about 7 days. The thing still works, but I replaced it with the balance One Core after adding some AC one Mini AC access points. They are good WAPS for sure. Again, not perfect - but very reliable and consistent. These two are able to be updated as new features are implemented. Oh, and all these new features are available free of charge - that part is pretty cool.

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They are already really good on the multi WAN feature, which most routers won’t handle properly. Now they just have to catch up on other stuff, like QoS, IPv6, CLI, etc.

I had the same issues with the TP-Link. The inner frame problem is very annoying, they know about it, but they just can’t fix it.

I hope I don’t get any hardware issue like you did. I live in Brazil, I bought Peplink Balance One in Amazon and redirected it to me using a mail forwading service. It took a month (and customs fees). If I ever have to exchange it, it would take another two months and more fees.

And for some reason I can’t understand, InControl2 says “Warranty Expiry Date: 2017-05-22 (In warranty)”. I bought it in February, installed it this month and warranty expires on May? This is a really shot warranty.

Your reseller should have done the sales registration but you can also register your product on our site with the correct date of purchase.

Thanks.

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Dang, that stinks about all the customs delays. It sounds like you have other routers around, and the Peplink devices are very reliable - I will cross my fingers that you have good luck. Any piece of electronics will fail in time - you may want to invest in a spare just in case. It is far better to have and not need then to need and not have.

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Thanks. I usually leave the old router as a spare when I buy a new one. My backup now is an ASUS RT-AC68U, which I’m using as wireless access point now because it has more range than the Peplink. It’s very reliable using single WAN and it has good QoS, but if I enable Dual WAN all kinds of bugs appears. I don’t think Asus will ever fix this as they don’t even advertise their routers as Dual WAN capable. I’ve sold the TP-Link. There’s also an old Netgear running OpenWRT as a second access point.

@fbreve keep an eye on this other thread.

There is mention of a feature that prevents your scenario. Don’t know if it is applicable to the Balance One or not though.

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It’s not only Youtube uploads. Google Photo Uploader also kills the Internet connection. Basically, any upload that is not limited on the source will kill the Internet connection. I should have taken the pfSense way. Peplink is a disaster.

Do you have multiple WANs? You have the tools to manage your traffic across the links.

Since you are having congestion issues, perhaps you should decrease the configured upload speed to 90% of the capacity for each WAN. Then setup someoutbound policies for port 80 to use the “least used”.

You should also set up your user groups and put some upload bandwith limits to keep one device from consuming your total capacity. I put all of my devices as either guest or staff (managers cannot be throttled). I leave the manager group empty except for a couple of devices (because I dedicate an entire WAN to it during certain times - so I don’t care if it uses all the bandwith).

Since the manager group is empty, reserve 10% of your bandwith for them (that will keep all clients restricted to 90% - which should leave room for your web traffic). You can split the staff and guest at 45% each, or set it how you want. The idea is to reserve enough bandwith for your other traffic.

These settings should really help your situation, but you have to do the work to identify and manage your network traffic. Put an outbound policy for YouTube.com and your phot upload sites - make sure that they are never on the same WAN link, etc.

Now that the technical stuff is out of the way… you are free to have your opinion. You are free to express your opinion. Just a little advice though - don’t dog on a product to a forum that supports that product. You will get better assistance with less badmouthing. The product is really good and once you are familiar with its capabilities, I think you will find that it is one of the best commercial grade routers you can buy. Eventually, Peplink will implement better QOS and possibly some SQM, maybe layer 7 recognition. Right now, their bread and butter is with multi-wan, central web-based management (inControl2), and PepVPN bonding. They do these things very well. It was never advertised as a “lag” or “congestion” killer. Though, with a little effort on your end - it can do a good job at eliminating lag and managing congestion. I truly hope that you eventually start to love your router - it is a good piece of gear. Post back if you have any specific questions on how to best handle traffic scenarios.

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I have two WANs:
Fiber: 15 Mbps down / 2 Mbps up
ADSL: 10 Mbps down / 500 Kbps up

I’m already using the algorithm that chooses the lowest latency WAN, which is usually Fiber, but since latency grows up quickly on congestion, it will choose ADSL then.

Upload limits may work so other devices may still navigate, but it won’t help on the device that is generating the load. And it will be always active, because the limit is applied all the time and not only on congestion.

I could put every device on Staff or Guest, and reserve 10% for Manager, but then only Manager will navigate on congestions, other Staff and Guest devices wouldn’t.

I really feel that I’m creating workarounds for problems that shouldn’t exist in any router. I mean, I understand when P2P traffic kills Internet connection, as there are many connections. But I’m talking about a single TCP connection taking the entire link. This shouldn’t happen in any router.

And there is a option on Peplink “DSL/Cable Optimization” that should handle this issue, but apparently it doesn’t.

As for the other stuff. You are right, I know. It’s just that it is a little frustating as I was expecting this router to solve my Dual WAN problems without introducing new ones. If I lived in a decent country it would be easy to buy this router, receive it in less than a week, test it for a few days, return it after I found out about the limitations and get the next one on the list. But unfortunatelly I live in a country where the only Dual WAN router available is that TP-Link aforementioned. To get this Peplink I had to redirect the package, pay expensive shipment, taxes and wait for more than a month.

Have you tried to daisy chain them? I have seen some improvement when running two multi wan routers. It is definitely less straight forward, but it is possible. I think the biggest gains for me is isolating the LAN broadcast chatter and AP management from the WAN functions. Perhaps a combination of the two will provide all the features you want or need - all be it completely managed by your design and implementation. The only gotchas are PNP and multicast domain membership stuff. Imagine a dedicated device for LAN and one for WAN.

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