What do you want to use QoS for?

HG659B is a great unit, so without really knowing what you want to get out of a replacement or what your requirements are it's hard to recommend anything.

I agree with @sbiddle (not very often! ). I have the HG659 and it is pretty rock solid. Wifi issues were solved with later Vodafone firmware. There is VOIP and gaming going on here on VDSL with no complaints.

Managing competing demands for internet connection.

E.g. Streaming on demand content upstairs vs playing MMO games while on a steam video chat conference downstairs

We had QoS on our previous router (Netgear) and it worked a treat.  I bumped mine and my partner's devices up (and the Chromecasts) and kids computers down the pecking order.

Also restricting times internet is available was a useful function of QoS. 

sbiddle:

 

What do you want to use QoS for?

 

I've got an Asus RT-AC68U which works fine with UFB and has QoS, good bulletproof 802.11ac wireless unit.

It's since been superseded, can't speak of the newer models.

MikeAqua:

 

I'd appreciate a recommendation for a unit with QoS replace our HG659B which was supplied by Spark when we upgraded to UFB.

 

 

Me, too. 

The thing 'gets tired' and throughput drops to barely 1Mbps. I'm on 200 / 200 Fibre.

Turning it off and on at least once / day seems to fix it. 

Last night it was dropping wifi connections...... 

But won't configuring QoS on your local router only have an influence on your uploaded traffic? Steaming is mostly downloading (not sure about gaming). I can't see how you will be able to influence the priority of data being downloaded, wouldn't that involve your ISP doing that for you?

MikeAqua:

 

Managing competing demands for internet connection.

 

E.g. Streaming on demand content upstairs vs playing MMO games while on a steam video chat conference downstairs

 

We had QoS on our previous router (Netgear) and it worked a treat.  I bumped mine and my partner's devices up (and the Chromecasts) and kids computers down the pecking order.

 

Also restricting times internet is available was a useful function of QoS. 

 

sbiddle:

 

What do you want to use QoS for?

 

 

There will probably be people on here who disagree with me but my personal view is that you don't need QoS, and what you want to do will be ineffective anyway based on the simple fact QoS ultimately can't control the order in which downstream packets are sent to you from your ISP. QoS is highly effective in minimizing upstream saturation if you're on a lower speed connection such as ADSL2+. If you're on a 100Mbps connection for example you will never saturate your connection, so no downstream QoS style connectivity that exists in a typical could ever take place anyway and your QoE will not differ whether you have QoS or not.

If you want to restrict or rate limit internal devices then it has it's place - but the scenarios posted above will not benefit from QoS capability.

Linuxluver:

 

MikeAqua:

 

I'd appreciate a recommendation for a unit with QoS replace our HG659B which was supplied by Spark when we upgraded to UFB.

 

 

 

Me, too. 

 

The thing 'gets tired' and throughput drops to barely 1Mbps. I'm on 200 / 200 Fibre.

 

Turning it off and on at least once / day seems to fix it. 

 

Last night it was dropping wifi connections...... 

 

 

 

I have a feeling it has got something to do with the weather. Mine too.

And mine. I offered the router a beer to cool it down, still no response, so I switched it off.

All I know is it worked really well with the old router. Part of the issue is the household gamer likes to host games so there is data flow both ways.

The time of day restrictions absolutely 100% work.

We have a nominally 100Mbps connection. Never seen anything like 100Mbps and it is very easy to saturate it. 

Two devices streaming HD (hard wired connections) and things start skipping/freezing etc.

I also find the router has to be restarted a few times a week (I have the latest firmware available from Spark).

sbiddle:

 

There will probably be people on here who disagree with me but my personal view is that you don't need QoS, and what you want to do will be ineffective anyway based on the simple fact QoS ultimately can't control the order in which downstream packets are sent to you from your ISP. QoS is highly effective in minimizing upstream saturation if you're on a lower speed connection such as ADSL2+. If you're on a 100Mbps connection for example you will never saturate your connection, so no downstream QoS style connectivity that exists in a typical could ever take place anyway and your QoE will not differ whether you have QoS or not.

 

If you want to restrict or rate limit internal devices then it has it's place - but the scenarios posted above will not benefit from QoS capability.

 

You're right and you're right - but by another name. Downstream can be controlled by policing traffic and can help by slowing down some users downloads or at least reserving some bandwidth for others.

But obviously it wouldn't be effective if there was ISP or LFC congestion

MikeAqua:

 

 

 

We have a nominally 100Mbps connection. Never seen anything like 100Mbps and it is very easy to saturate it. 

 

Saturating a 100Mbps connection with general usage is incredibly difficult unless you're intentionally trying to do it by generating excessive traffic.

sbiddle:

 

What do you want to use QoS for?

 

HG659B is a great unit, so without really knowing what you want to get out of a replacement or what your requirements are it's hard to recommend anything.

 

Not a great unit ta my house. It seems to have a severe memory leak as it gets slower and slower as time goes by, but a power off / reboot fixes it for most of the day.

I also have an ASUS RT-N66U router that works much better......in a secondary roll (that often see it used more then the primary router - as far as numbers of users is concerned). 

Anyway to put things back on topic - what are the requirements of a replacement router?

sbiddle:

 

What do you want to use QoS for?

 

HG659B is a great unit, so without really knowing what you want to get out of a replacement or what your requirements are it's hard to recommend anything.

 

Thinking about your question regarding QoS. It was on by default, unless I turned it on and forgot. 

I've now upgraded the firmware to the latest level and turned WMM / (QoS) off......so we'll see how that goes. 

Speedtest looks like this now (wifi to HG659b through 2 walls on 2.4GHz Channel 1). 

You can also see the 1Mbps results I was getting a few days ago.