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Forum Discussion
RBR50 Overly Prioritizing Smart TV Traffic?
I have a Orbi RBR50 being used as a router, which connects to a Netgear JGS516 unmanaged 16 port ethernet switch, which connects to 2 RBW30 satellites, 2 RBS30 satellites, as well as directly to several devices / additional switches throughout the house. My advertised internet speed is 1GB, although it tests to around 500mb.
I have a 4K Smart TV which often is used for streaming. It appears that some aspect of our network is giving complete priority to this TV when it is streaming; every 5-10 minutes during a show, seemingly whenever Netflix or whatever else is ready to add to the buffered content, the rest of the devices on the network are completely blocked for around 3-10 seconds. This means any voice calls or video games are completely disconnected, and resumed a few seconds later. This is much more of an issue when the Smart TV does a software update, which while downloading renders the rest of the devices on the network completely without internet for several minutes (the devices are still connected to the wired or wireless network, but seemingly no packets are received until the update is finished downloading on the TV).
Does the Orbi RBR50 have hidden QOS features that are giving priority to the TV because it is "streaming" or "smart TV" traffic? Or does this seem more like a case of bufferbloat with extremely large payloads hogging our gigabit bandwidth (which seems strange to me in the software update case, because we do not have issues when downloading large files on other devices)? Is there a resolution for this problem given my current equipment?
Thanks
2 Replies
First, a brief note: The RBW30 plug in satellite has no Ethernet port. It cannot be connected to an Ethernet switch.
https://www.netgear.com/images/datasheet/orbi/rbw30.pdf
Yes, the RBR50 has what appears to be a QOS priorityscheme built into the firmware, which cannot be modified by the user. At one time (years ago) the Orbi web interface had a web page called http://orbi login.net/QOS_main.htm , but that page no longer exists.
There are entries in the Orbi configuration file which mention specific applications and the term "qos". However, there is no documentation for these entries and no indication whether the system pays any attention to them (or not).
Streaming 4K video consumes a maximum of about 25Mbps of bandwidth. It is difficult to imagine how a smart TV could consume nearly a gigabit of bandwidth (the equivalent of almost 40 video streams).
Neverthless, one of the Tech Support mantras is, "when a user says there is a problem, there is always a problem" The trick is in figuring out what the problem is.
I have an RBR50 with three WiFi satellites and do not observe any issues when streaming video on a Sony TV.
Perhaps a good place to start is by describing how the smart TV is connected to the network and mentioning any other items on the network that might consume bandwidth (NAS? Cloud backups?)
Due to the nature of the symptom, I don't believe the 4K TV is capable of consuming the entire bandwidth at all times, but it does appear to consume the entire bandwidth for a few seconds every few minutes (I assume, as it downloads the next 10 minutes of a show as fast as the router lets it). This probably averages out to 25MB/s over the course of the show, but is divided up into short spirts of 500MB/s and long periods of 0MB/s. This is all just my assumption of how it works based on my experience, however. It is worth clarifying that the TV streams perfectly fine, it just creates micro outages for other devices on the network while in use.
The TV is connected to a switch which it shares with a Roku box, which is wired to the "master" switch, which is wired to the Orbi "master" router which is wired to the modem. The device which I frequently experience my issue on is my desktop PC, which is wired to the network via a switch -> another switch -> "master" switch -> Orbi "master" router.
From what you said about there being a firmware level QOS scheme that we don't have configuration controls over, I could just be out of luck without upgrading the router to more advanced hardware. I hope that is not the case, but sounds plausible. I do see the QOS control webpage at http://192.168.1.1/QOS_main.htm, but there is no option to reach this page without manually typing the URL, and submitting any change results in a 400 error, so it does appear to be either discontinued or only available on different routers.
