

Ask HN: What happened to Bufferbloat? - pjungwir

A few years ago I heard a lot of people worrying about how large buffers in our routers would cause latency problems. It all sounded very serious---like the end of the Internet. But I haven&#x27;t heard any news for a couple years. Everything on the Wikipedia page looks old:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bufferbloat<p>Is this something people are still concerned about? Were the original reports just hyperbole?
======
dtaht
It is everywhere... pretty thoroughly quantified now (example:

[http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/results/bufferbloat?up=1](http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest/results/bufferbloat?up=1)

)

It is serious and remains so... but

Fixes have emerged (fq_codel, pie, cake) that are widely available in linux
and linux derived gear -

which had spectacular results:

[http://burntchrome.blogspot.fr/2014/05/fixing-bufferbloat-
on...](http://burntchrome.blogspot.fr/2014/05/fixing-bufferbloat-on-comcasts-
blast.html)

and pie was mandated as part of the docsis 3.1 std.

and standardization efforts of the new aqms is taking place at the ietf. For
example, this RFC just emerged:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7567](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7567) and
there are other products of that working group nearing finalization.

While wifi and lte remain to be fixed, I sleep better knowing that the tide is
turning.

------
mmagin
It didn't go away. I was reminded of it recently when I read this:
[https://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-
nuts/2015-July/092770.ht...](https://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-
nuts/2015-July/092770.html)

------
drv
The bufferbloat-related changes made in CeroWRT
([http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt](http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt))
have been merged into the Linux kernel and the OpenWrt project.

------
vezzy-fnord
Seems like it's a phenomenon that goes through cycles of visibility, given its
documentation dates back to the early 80s.

------
MaulingMonkey
Twitch working on a form of buffer bloat recently:
[http://blog.twitch.tv/2015/05/new-reduced-stream-delay-
beta/](http://blog.twitch.tv/2015/05/new-reduced-stream-delay-beta/)

~~~
MaulingMonkey
(For clarity, _not_ router buffer bloat, and there's no real technical
discussion there either.)

