A couple of router settings that matter

[rebrecs]

Hi all, just passing along my experience - your mileage may vary.

I think its worth submitting since I was able to double both my UP and DOWN test speeds with these small changes.

These observations were made with an ASUS AC-3100 Router, from a hardwired 8p 24 gig (mem) server with a 1 gig Ethernet card.

 

Firewall off

I understand this is religious, but I set the devices to protect themselves as best I can. After all, I had no firewall rules in place anyway. So the firewall was just kind of a big piece of code in the router that had to do work on the packets - slowing the router down significantly. IMO that protection can be done elsewhere for much less expense in speed. Again, broad stroke firewall (even with no rules set) does protect against certain attacks - so turning it of is a choice I gamble on since I'm not the department of defense and nobody is trying to prove anything by screwing me over.

AND, my server firewall does the same stuff regarding DoS attacks and what not. ( all these fear factors we live with )

NAT Acceleration (cut through) on

NAT is a confusing thing to investigate. Devices, L3 switches, routers all have settings. I'm still reading about it. However for today, I can tell you that NAT acceleration ON allows a bunch of stuff to bypass the processor in the router and it makes a HUGE difference in Download speed. Turning it on or off did not make any difference in Upload speed.

DNS Settings

Talking about DNS settings arrives at a discussion of DHCP settings. That is because DHCP does you the kind favor of loading up the address of it's favorite DNS values when you do not tell it otherwise.

This is the setting that allowed me to get from about 5Mbps Upload to 20Mbps Upload instantly. I was initially using the ISPs DNS server, and had my router set to allow DHCP pass through so my devices were becoming contaminated with the ISPs DNS address. This is a tricky topic but it makes a big difference.  Consult your manuals carefully.

Bottom line, do what is needed to get a good DNS server working for you.

 

--john

 

 

[CA3LE]

9 hours ago, rebrecs said:

This is a tricky topic but it makes a big difference.  Consult your manuals carefully.

Bottom line, do what is needed to get a good DNS server working for you.

 

Hi John, thank you for sharing the great information.  Very happy to hear that you've improved your speeds. 

 

Did you switch your DNS to Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 (and 1.0.0.1) or Google 8.8.8.8 (and 8.8.4.4)?  For other people who'd like to do this you can find it on the Connection Guide under "Step 6 - Improve Your DNS Resolution and Privacy".

 

DNS over HTTPS is available for Firefox users.  I'm pretty certain that this is going to become the new standard and will eventually roll out to all browsers.  May be able to do this at the router level in the future too.  ISPs won't like that.  Right now, all of your DNS traffic is being send with clear text, meaning it could be snooped.  DNS over HTTPS encrypts your DNS queries.  Encryption always has the potential to slow things down but actually (reading the link above) they say in many cases it's actually faster.

 

Again, happy to hear you've picked up some extra speed that you've been paying for. 

[rebrecs]

Sir Webmaster,

I am using DNS services from Cloudfare (1.1.1.1 / 1.0.0.1)

So that you know your efforts are not in vain - I chose Cloudfare based on reading "Step 6" a while back. Good Document.

?

 

 

 

[Rom]

Hello,   I would like to make a comment about what you said about shutting down the firewall and well agree temporally anyway to run my speed check test.  Call me parionoid but I always run a full system scan afterwards to be safe. 

Back in Dec 2021 I started looking for bottlenecks  in my system.  I already had changed my DNS settings on my router.   What I have found to be a large B.N. was my hard drive.  I changed to using a PC with a NVME2 drive, three times write speeds.  It along with temporarily turning off my AVG Firewall and disabling my AVG Anti Track Browser protection increased my down  speeds three fold.   I see your a Suddenlink user also would like to say thanks and hope you can give it a try.  Rom