First time user here who found your project through researching a router for SMB client (10 users in small office). Needing to replace an old Netgear WNDR3800 running OpenWRT that seems to be showing its age. Jumped right in with IPFire on an old PC after researching pfsense/Untangle/etc. It’s now been running for two days. So some feedback.
First, I was surprised after the almost 300mb download that I had to plug in to internet during install to get more downloads. What is downloaded that couldn’t be included in the iso? Updates I assume? After the downloads, install was pretty straight-forward and pretty easy to get the router initially setup and connected.
When connecting to webgui gets a SSL certificate error in modern browsers. Have to manually accept that this isn’t a malicious website in browser to be able to access the webgui. Have to do this everytime after clearing cache and since there is no logout option in the webgui, clearing the cache needs to be done so as not to leave it wide open to next person using that browser. So certificate issue needs to be fixed or there needs to just be standard http option. A logout should be standard as well.
One of my favorite things about OpenWRT is that it includes modern AQM (fq_codel and fq_cake) and the both work well to battle the prevalent bufferbloat issues. I’ve seen it clean up jitter and ping spikes pretty dramatically at times. Having fq_codel support in IPFire was a big reason I went with it.
But it appears QOS in IPFire is still bound to old concepts of priority despite using fq_codel. With AQM QOS the neat part of them is not having to painstakingly set QOS priority rules. Rather you just need to set the bandwidth limits and fq_codel takes care of the rest. Having to priorities to get QOS to be active while having fq_codel as it’s default scheduler is redundant.
After much testing of your QOS config page, it appears that QOS does not seem to be even active UNLESS these rules are put in. There has to be at least one rule. The quickest way to get the benefit of fq_codel in IPFire is to just enter bandwidth and then select “preset” to which it will create a bunch of popular priority rules for you and leave as is. Bufferbloat tests show fq_codel is at least active.
If I delete all the rules, QOS still shows running, but graphs are no longer working and bufferbloat is back (fq_codel isn’t active). For simplicity I suppose one could just create two all-traffic rules for down/up at 100/200 priority to get fq_codel working way it supposed to?
Anyway, I like what I see so far. Router has been solid for two days and Zoom/Teams/RDP traffic feels faster with less lag. I am hoping IPFire will be the solution for this client and more. If so I will happily donate to the project.
Thanks