fasterdata.es.netfasterdata.es.netESnet Network Performance Knowledge Base
Network Tuning

Buffer Bloat

Recently there has been much discussion of the Buffer Bloat problem in the Internet. It is important to understand that the buffer bloat problem only affects networks that are 100Mbps or slower, while fasterdata is aimed at networks that are 10Gbps or faster. Most operating systems today have default settings for 1Gbps networks, and need to be tuned for both faster and slower networks.

Note that most of the tuning information on fasterdata will make the buffer bloat problem worse if your host is on a slower network.

Here are a few host tuning techniques that might help address buffer bloat issues on slow networks.

Linux

  • reduce the default txqueuelen  (e.g.: /sbin/ifconfig eth0 txqueuelen 16)
  • reduce the default NIC tx dma queue (e.g.: ethtool -G eth0 tx 1)

OSX

  • email us if you discover a way to do this in OSX

MS Windows

  • email us if you discover a way to do this in Windows