Halp! How could the supposedly epic Buffalo + Tomato network setting be interrupting my download speeds?

Hooking directly to modem (Roadrunner Turbo) averages with dslreports and speedtest.net:
Download: 14,179 kbs
Upload: 480 kbs

Hooking directly to router running latest version of Tomato with recommended QOS:
Download: 1,100 kbs
Upload: 480 kbs

Anyone who is good with this stuff help me understand what the heck is going on here? Upload is unaffected but downloads are totally dismantled...

[Edited on March 11, 2009 at 9:19 AM. Reason : -]

3/11/2009 9:19:16 AM

Did you mistype Max Bandwidth in QoS Inbound Limit?

3/11/2009 9:22:54 AM

That's at 10,000

Yes - Enable QoS
No - Prioritize small packets with these control flags ACK SYN FIN RST
No - Prioritize ICMP
No - Reset class when changing settings
Max Inbound - 10,000K
Max Outbound - 500K

3/11/2009 9:32:06 AM

have you disabled QoS and seen if it changes anything?

3/11/2009 9:41:27 AM

Hrmmm, that helped - bumped it to 3000 kbs. At least I'm moving in the right direction, and I thought QOS was supposed to increase speeds...


Any other settings you guys think may play a role that the router is throttling that extra speed?

3/11/2009 9:48:11 AM

I have 8Mb/512k and it is set at 8192/500 w/ACK prioritized and 98%/90%/85%/80%/75%

10000 seems low for what you're getting on speedtests regardless. Does Time Warner have a speed ftp that you can queue a 50MB file up on one PC and then another and see if the bottleneck is per thread?

I was going to suggest disabling QoS, but figured this was trivial and would most likely yield true speeds.


QoS just prioritizes traffic so that if a roommate or significant other is pounding all 14megs down on an ftp transfer, or all 512Kb up on bittorrent seeds, it will put your measly 1kb http request ahead of these other packets.

[Edited on March 11, 2009 at 9:55 AM. Reason : -->]

3/11/2009 9:49:11 AM

yeah their #56 test at http://www.twcurl.com/

Now that moves fast, it says 26000kbs but man it's timewarner not sure how they are getting that inflated number. On speedtest.net and dslreports it's far lower....I know it has to do with ping time and all but still

3/11/2009 9:52:16 AM

Does DNS server have anything to do with it?

I had my static DNS set to the opendns server place....I think there is a 'local' one for roadrunner people at 24.25.5.150 right?

3/11/2009 9:54:53 AM

Will Embarq let you on theirs? ftp://63.162.197.68

3/11/2009 9:55:20 AM

alternatively try 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 for dns servers if you think that may be the issue

3/11/2009 9:56:55 AM

If Verizon ever locks those down, there will be a lot of computers I've messed with throughout the years that suddenly go dark.

3/11/2009 9:58:28 AM

I tried DL'ing the 100 meg file and it started at 700k/sec and then peaked at 1.2m/sec. That's far too slow right?

3/11/2009 9:59:24 AM

that's 6-10 megabit

assuming you mean 700KB/s and 1.2MB/s

[Edited on March 11, 2009 at 10:02 AM. Reason : .]

3/11/2009 10:01:57 AM

Quote :

"I thought QOS was supposed to increase speeds..."

QoS basically prioritizes traffic. if it's setup wrong it can basically decide whatever you're trying to download isn't important and slow it down to nearly nothing. for a regular home network i really don't see much point in having it turned on for most people and esp for troubleshooting you need to turn as much crap like that off as you possibly can.

Quote :

"I tried DL'ing the 100 meg file and it started at 700k/sec and then peaked at 1.2m/sec. That's far too slow right?"

uh, that's fast as fuck. it's working fine..leave it alone

and use ncsu DNS servers, 152.1.1.206 i think it is..theyre a lot faster than RR's but still have nothing to do with download speeds..

[Edited on March 11, 2009 at 10:03 AM. Reason : a]

3/11/2009 10:02:06 AM

if it was a dns issue the speed test wouldn't work.

reset everything to the defaults, leave qos disabled, and give it a go again. Use speedtest.net or one of those rr test sites (same thing).

Check cables.

lastly, verify the speeds between router <-> modem and modem <-> computar are either set to auto negotiate on both sides of each connection, or both set to 100 full. I cant imagine this would be a problem but if you read some morons guide that told you to change it from auto to something else, that could be the problem.

[Edited on March 11, 2009 at 10:09 AM. Reason : a]

3/11/2009 10:05:48 AM

I dont know how to check if it's on 'auto negotiate'...where would I see that? I have a vanilla Vista setup here. Not sure where that is in tomato either..

Thanks for the tip on the NCSU DNS servers, I'll put em up. I'll also leave QOS off

3/11/2009 10:13:58 AM

if you haven't changed it then its probably fine. Im not sure where to check in tomato off the top of my head.

Did you have this problem with the default firmware?

3/11/2009 10:18:10 AM

If you're getting speeds that high then it is working fine from a downloading perspective. Leave it alone.

3/11/2009 10:19:19 AM