Guide 13: QoS (Quality of Service) Setup — Eliminating Bufferbloat for Gamers

Bufferbloat occurs when your broadband connection is saturated by large file downloads or cloud backups, causing router buffers to fill up with packets. As a result, critical time-sensitive packets (gaming pings, voice calls) sit waiting in line, causing latency to spike from 15ms to 400ms+.

Enabling Smart Queue Management (SQM)

Standard FIFO (First-In, First-Out) queuing is obsolete. By enabling QoS or SQM (such as FQ-CoDel or CAKE in custom firmware like OpenWrt):

• Set your QoS bandwidth limit to 90–95% of your true measured download and upload speed.
• This ensures the queue builds inside the router's smart scheduler rather than inside the ISP's unmanaged buffer, instantly yielding an A+ Bufferbloat grade on QuantamNetPro!