Benefits of FlowQueue-Based Active Queue Management for Interactive Online Games

Consumers frequently get Internet access through a single home gateway. Gateways using conventional FIFO queue management can introduce hundreds or even thousands of milliseconds of additional delay when congested by bulk TCP data transfers. This delay impacts negatively on any latency-sensitive interactive traffic (such as Voice over IP, or First Person Shooter games). Such applications prefer network connectivity having low latency and low packet loss. New approaches using Active Queue management (AQM) schemes keep queuing delays low by getting TCP to react sooner through the implementation of early packet drops. We characterise the collateral damage caused to interactive application flows by single-queue (CoDel and PIE) and multi-queue (FQ-CoDel) AQM schemes, and provide strong experimental evidence to support widespread deployment of multi-queue (FQ) variants.