Noticing some distinct periods of lag throughout the day. When a lag spike occurs, gaming or VoIP becomes an impossible task.
After analyzing through my collectd logs, I noticed that my SQM backlog is peaking to roughly 10,000 at random moments. These spikes don't seem to coincide with normal usage as they also happen in the middle of the night when usage is minimal. It also doesn't seem to follow a pattern in terms of other stats such as temperature, cpu, interface traffic, etc. An image of the spiked backlog can be found here:
I'm on a 1000/25 connection running SQM (cake/piece_of_cake) on a NanoPi R4S. My down is pretty stable (+10ms) so I have the SQM enabled to egress only at 20000 kb/s.
What could be causing this? Is this normal behavior? When it isn't spiking, it works great.
This sounds a lot like a cable/ docsis connection, which tends to have a few quirks - starting with the old Intel puma chipset issues and overprovisioned cable segments, as well as interference.
The higher baseline starting around 08:30 (and presumably ending around 01:30) does point into the general direction of (over-)usage of this segment, as do the ping spikes around noon (the ones around 01:50 and 06:40 less so…). It would be interesting if you encounter more of that during daytime (missing from your graph) - or if one would suspect environmental interference.
Yes, this is using a docsis 3.1 modem through Spectrum Broadband.
I WFH and wake up at 8:30 which is likely the source of the higher baseline. I do however live alone so the idea that I could tax the network this hard surprises me. It really stinks because when it does peak, everyone's voice sounds very robotic and gaming is impossible for a few seconds...
The rest of the day was pretty smooth until I had a 4:15 (16:15) meeting which can be seen pretty evidently...
