> On 21 Apr, 2020, at 9:22 pm, Justin Kilpatrick <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> I have a frequently changing link I'm using automated tools to monitor and 
> tune using Cake. Currently I'm only tuning bandwidth parameter using latency 
> and packet loss data.
> 
> My reading of the codel RFC seems to say that trying to tune the 'interval' 
> value using known path and link latency won't provide any advantages over 
> just tuning the bandwidth parameter.
> 
> Obviously codel is just one part of the Cake setup and I'm wondering if there 
> are any advantages I'm missing by not providing this extra input using data I 
> already gather. 

The default latency parameters are tuned well for general Internet paths.  The 
median path length on the public Internet is about 80ms, for which the default 
interval of 100ms and target of 5ms works well.  Codel is also designed to 
accommodate a significant deviation from the expected path length without too 
much difficulty.

I think it's only worth trying to adjust this if your typical path is 
substantially different from that norm.  If all your traffic goes over a 
satellite link, for example, the default parameters might be too tight.  If the 
vast majority of it goes to a local CDN, you could try the "metro" keyword to 
tighten things up a bit.  Otherwise, you'll be fine.

Also, most protocols are actually not very sensitive to how tight the AQM is 
set in the first place.  Either they don't really care about latency at all 
(eg. bulk downloads) or they are latency-sensitive but also sparse (eg. DNS, 
NTP, VoIP).  So they are more interested in being isolated from the influence 
of other flows, which Cake does pretty well regardless of the AQM settings.

It's *considerably* more important to ensure that your shaper is configured 
correctly.  That means setting not only the bandwidth parameter, but the 
overhead parameters as well.  A bad shaper setting could result in some or all 
of your traffic not seeing Cake as the effective bottleneck, and thus not 
receiving its care.  This can be an orders-of-magnitude effect, depending on 
just how bloated the underlying hardware is.

 - Jonathan Morton
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