said by JohnInSJ:They're not unique. Same issues over ADSL modems (I recall when we had this problem on AT&T/PacBell, and then later Sonic.net, over RT connections.)
Yes, it happens on pretty much any consumer-grade internet service -- DSL, Satellite, 3G, and Cable.
said by JohnInSJ:Large buffers provide performance advantages to 99.999% of all home broadband users. The ones saturating their uplinks should know how to fix it.
Not really. Buffering past 200ms is probably harmful in essentially all cases. TCP Adjusts it's sending rate based on packet loss, buffering prevents that loss and convinces the sending side to continue increasing the speed until eventually it exhausts the buffer, after latency has become so high as to make all other interactive sessions unusable.
In fact most business-grade routers (Gig-E/10GE) have buffers smaller than 10ms, and are fully capable of maxing out at 1000 or 10,000 Mbps. There is simply no reason to have 1000ms of buffering in any standard broadband link.
But yeah, I agree that if you are smart enough to notice the problem, you should be able to fix it -- and probably in a better way than the generic untuned one-size-fits-all queue management that your ISP will pick.
