Wi‑Fi Hub QoS to prioritise and/or limit device bandwidth

[jklloyd]

We have recently purchased the Wi-Fi Hub and have noticed a significant improvement in the wireless coverage and performance throughout our home. However, we have children and are currently in an area without fibre, which means their devices and use case (i.e. youtube) often comprise more important services such as on-demand TV and Video!

Quality of Service (QoS) allows available bandwidth to be divvied up and prioritised between applications and devices. With good QoS rules, we could ensure that streaming video on our TV doesn’t stutter because of a big file be downloaded (or uploaded) at the same time, or that my work laptop isn’t sluggish when I'm trying to meet that last minute deadline while my kids are playing games online.

QoS has been a common feature of most premium ADSL routers for years and I believe this was also present on your HG633 - albeit it was only accessible via a hidden menu?! I truly believe that this would prove to be an invaluable feature of the Wi-Fi Hub and sincerely hope that it is considered for a future release??

[OCE_Michelle]

@jklloyd Thanks for the feedback and I've passed this over to our Products Team for future consideration. If anything changes then I'll update your idea to let you know.

[Branta]

Me too.  I am listening to Internet radio (on a Yamaha MusicCast device connected via wi-fi), then I decide to do a big backup to my NAS.  My NAS connects to the hub via a gigabit wired connection, but the data is coming from my notebook to the hub over wi-fi.

The radio stops playing during the backup.  The traffic from my PC to the hub has grabbed all the wi-fi bandwidth and left none for the radio.  The irony is that if the entertainment devices could be given priority (like on a decent router), the bandwidth loss to the backup process would be pretty well unnoticeable except on the very rare occasions when someone is streaming 1080p video.

So sorry for the OP that he paid money to discover the many drawbacks of the TalkTalk Wi-Fi Hub.  Mine came "for free" when joining TT on a fibre connection, and my disappointment is great enough.  If I had paid money for it I would be livid 

[apaizulaev]

QoS really is a must-have for any proper network. It's now a while a new wifi hub is deploying and QoS is still absent.

Right now I am trying to down-level a torrent traffic setting it DSCP priority 8, but this does not work.

If some upstream traffic comes up, rtt for all traffic increases, making wifi calling and even live streaming experience awful.

This is something already implemented in a linux core software, please enable it for a customers, TalkTalk.

[Branta]

I had no confidence that the various issues with the TT "wifi Hub" would be sorted in a timely manner, so for more than a couple of months I have been using a Draytek "Vigor 2762ac". It's perhaps a business-class solution - and costs even more than TT used to say their hub was worth (when it was new and we were all gullible ;-).

But nevertheless, it's real good to be able to say my problems are all gone. With particular reference to QoS issues, I confess I didn't learn how to set up the QoS options yet on my Draytek device. But I didn't need to, the default settings nicely sort out the annoying problem that I noted above.

[pmcgurk]

@Branta good to hear of your positive experience with the Draytek.  Did you have any trouble getting the details you needed from TT to configure the connection on your non-TT router?  I'm thinking of going down the same road as I'm doing tons of videoconferencing at the moment and the connections are not great sometimes despite 80Mbit at the router and 50 at my device.

[Branta]

If you google "Draytek TalkTalk" the top hit will be a Draytek support article "DrayTek Router & Modem VDSL2 Setup with TalkTalk". But you won't probably won't be allowed to read it until you get your Draytek modem and get a login to Draytek support ! But I think in fact the modem might have guided me the right way even without the application note. I followed this (with no help from TT) and it just worked. But being a cautious sort of bloke I had taken screenshots of all the relevant settings pages from the TT "Hub" just in case. The only thing I noticed it did differently was to give me Google DNS (8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4) instead of TalkTalk DNS (79.79.79.79 & 79.79.79.80).

Subsequently I found I had a need to use a VPN and I was thrilled to find that my Draytek 2762AC would handle this for me. I googled "Draytek NordVPN" and there was a support article telling me how to do it. However at the end of that article is an implication that I can tell the modem which traffic should go via the VPN and which traffic direct via my ISP, but that was an oversimplification as the article supports multiple models. In fact with my 2762AC it's "all or nothing" regarding which traffic goes via the VPN.  Apparently if I'd bought the 2862AC model I would have been able to specify which of the devices on my network will have their traffic directed via the VPN. But the 2862AC is loads more money !  But then again, there isn't much it can't do.

[sam-cross]

I know this is a somewhat old thread, but QoS is a basic feature of any modern router. I should be shocked that it hasn't been implemented on the newer TT equipment, but these hubs already lack a lot of other basic features...

Firmware feature requests for these "best ever" WiFi Hubs should be a priority, because we're being sold this so-called amazing device, which turns out to be next to useless. Without QoS, any download or video streaming saturates the connection and interrupts high-priority applications like video calling apps and online games, which is unacceptable when TT advertise these Hubs the way they do.

[Branta]

No need to apologise for posting in an old thread.  The whole point is that this much-trumpeted piece of kit has been released for so very long, yet still doesn't do what we should reasonably be able to expect.

Me, I got an opportunity to grab a Draytek 2862AC at a good price, and I'm well chuffed with it.  I was pretty chuffed with the 2762AC  (see above) but now I can just tell the router which devices (by local ip address) should have their traffic routed via the vpn, and it just happens.  Bliss.  But not cheap, admittedly.

[Futaura]

The Sagemcom FAST5364 does have lots of QoS features and also WiFi shaper rates in the firmware - it's just that they cannot be configured or seen from TalkTalk's web UI, unfortunately 😞