{"id":6702,"date":"2025-10-19T13:37:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T12:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?page_id=6702"},"modified":"2025-10-19T13:37:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T12:37:18","slug":"opnsense-configuration-to-counteract-bufferbloat","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/?page_id=6702","title":{"rendered":"OPNsense Configuration to Counteract “BufferBloat”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One factor that influenced me moving away from the LEAF Bering-uClibc<\/a> Linux distribution for the Internet router and onto a more specialised router software distribution (OPNsense<\/a>) was that LEAF was missing the software packages to counteract “BufferBloat” – the tendency for the data buffers on the Internet link to grow so as to prevent other TCP\/IP connections achieving low latency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on BufferBloat, see: https:\/\/www.bufferbloat.net\/projects\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assessing “BufferBloat”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

MacOS NetworkQuality Utility<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The MacOS operating system includes a standard command-line tool called networkQualit<\/code>y which includes an assessment of BufferBloat via its ‘Responsiveness’ metric. (A Low score for Responsiveness is ‘bad’.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

% networkQuality 
==== SUMMARY ====
Uplink capacity: 14.934 Mbps
Downlink capacity: 65.011 Mbps
Responsiveness: Low (365.962 milliseconds | 163 RPM)
Idle Latency: 98.430 milliseconds | 609 RPM<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Waveform Speed Test<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The online tool https:\/\/www.waveform.com\/tools\/bufferbloat<\/a> includes a more explicit measure of BufferBloat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Summary screen from Waveform Speed Test before configuring Active Queue Management<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Configuring Active Queue Management for OPNsense<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The standard OPNsense documentation provides pretty good guidance; see: https:\/\/docs.opnsense.org\/manual\/how-tos\/shaper_bufferbloat.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simply following these instructions gave good results. Setting the Queues to 85% of the nominal Download and Upload bandwidth values proved too conservative and tuning showed these could be increased to 19\/20 (95%) for Upload and 73\/80 (91.25%) for Download while preserving an A+ score.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Summary screen from Waveform Speed Test after configuring Active Queue Management<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Introduction One factor that influenced me moving away from the LEAF Bering-uClibc Linux distribution for the Internet router and onto a more specialised router software distribution (OPNsense) was that LEAF was missing the software packages to counteract “BufferBloat” – the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":5732,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6702","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6702"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6706,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6702\/revisions\/6706"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshflattsfarm.org.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}