Excellent analysis.
The thing is: processing data, which can't be rate controlled, calls for real-time OS. And vast majority of modern OSes (linux, macOS, windows included) are not real-time OSes. These can only process such data if their hardware is seemingly overspecced for the task ... because that gives them extra capacity to cover any processing spikes. And that means that average resource consumption should stay well bellow certain threshold (for CPU when processing network data streams I'd say bellow 50%).
When it comes to router the hardware constraint is a bit less stringent because router can (slightly) control data rate ... delayed forwarding of packets is common way of rate limiting (think queues). So lack of resources on router/firewall generally reduces throughput without inducing too much of packet loss.
So I think that your plan to try with more powerful computer for running SO is a good plan.
Before you go and shell out money you may want to try to configure your Topton to run at "high performance" (usually BIOSes have some similar setting) which should force computer to run at higher CPU frequencies most of time. The problem with (aggressive) CPU frequency down-switching is that it takes a while to up-switch as well ... and that delay may cause software to skip a beat or two. But if such a setting exists, it might give just enough boost for SO to stop missing packets.
My guess: it's likely that your gamer is pretty much faster than your laptop, so it could ACK packets with considerably lower latency ... and hence use (a bit) more of available bandwidth. If the "sniffing" computer is on the edge of performance, every tiny increase of processing can push it over the edge. And CPU utilization up to 90% indicates that SO is at the edge.I dont know, why the packet loss is higher, when I download from my gamer than my laptop.
The thing is: processing data, which can't be rate controlled, calls for real-time OS. And vast majority of modern OSes (linux, macOS, windows included) are not real-time OSes. These can only process such data if their hardware is seemingly overspecced for the task ... because that gives them extra capacity to cover any processing spikes. And that means that average resource consumption should stay well bellow certain threshold (for CPU when processing network data streams I'd say bellow 50%).
When it comes to router the hardware constraint is a bit less stringent because router can (slightly) control data rate ... delayed forwarding of packets is common way of rate limiting (think queues). So lack of resources on router/firewall generally reduces throughput without inducing too much of packet loss.
So I think that your plan to try with more powerful computer for running SO is a good plan.
Before you go and shell out money you may want to try to configure your Topton to run at "high performance" (usually BIOSes have some similar setting) which should force computer to run at higher CPU frequencies most of time. The problem with (aggressive) CPU frequency down-switching is that it takes a while to up-switch as well ... and that delay may cause software to skip a beat or two. But if such a setting exists, it might give just enough boost for SO to stop missing packets.
Statistics: Posted by mkx — Tue Jan 28, 2025 10:08 pm