Advice for QoS / SQM - device priority levels

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I'm a fairly basic user of OpenWrt, so I do a bit of config etc, but don't have lots of knowledge about troubleshooting.

I'm looking for a way to set up some kind of QoS on my OpenWrt setup.

To give you some background;
I want certain devices in my house to have high, medium or low priority, rather than priority of the tasks the devices are doing regardless of device.

For example, a Google Hub device watching a stream of the news, the video stutters and buffers.
When I use a stock firmware the same device stutters and buffers UNTIL I set the QoS options in the router to set that device as high priority, then the videos play perfectly.
I also want to set a NAS to low priority, so it doesn't slow down my other devices when running a download.

With OpenWrt set up, I get the same stutter/buffering on the Google hubs when playing certain content.
I've tried to set up SQM using luci-app-sqm and configuring the basic settings of setting up my ingress and egress speeds, and well as trying out the different default setup scripts (piece of cake, layer cake, simple, simplest etc) but none of these are working great for me.
They are making some kind of difference, as a couple of the vary between Google Hub constantly buffering, not not buffering as much.

I'm not a gamer, so a perfume scripts set up for gamers wouldn't be of any use to me.

Are there any SQM scripts that are aimed at media streaming that I could try
Or is there any simple way to set individual devices to different priority levels such as low, medium and high (like you do with most default router stock firmware).

My connection is UK Virgin Media (fibre)
270 Mbits download
27 Mbits upload
Router - Netgear R7800

2

I only use SQM to reduce/eliminate bufferbloat, so I can't help with your shaping request, but did you see the traffic shaping wiki article?

1 Like
3

You might be asking the wrong question (about giving different devices higher or lower priority).

SQM is designed to give all devices fair access to the slowest link (generally, the connection to your ISP). That is, devices with small amounts of data go first, devices sending or receiving large amounts of data get throttled unless there's no other traffic. And if two devices (or apps) are sending a lot of data, they share the bandwidth.

My recommendation would be to configure SQM to see how it works. If everyone is happy with that one easy config, then you don't have to spend time with other QoS settings.

[Sorry... I misread your post.] I'd be intrigued to hear the settings you used for SQM: Download & Upload speeds, interface name, and queue discipline you've chosen.

PS I have used SQM on a 7mbps/768kbps DSL link with great results. It was never fast, but it was always responsive.