Smart Queues has been a feature within the UniFi Controller for a number of years and has a few benefits when enabled.

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Why would I need to enable Smart Queues?

If you have limited amount of bandwidth available and have 300Mbps or less, then you can enable Smart Queues.

This feature is ideal for reducing bufferbloat, something that occurs when large file transfers max out the upstream connection, causing real time applications to become unstable, such as VoIP, video calls and online games.

If you have an internet connection that has more than 300Mbps, it is not recommended to enable Smart Queues, mainly for CPU utilisation reasons.

What are the requirements?

To use Smart Queues you need a UniFi Gateway, such as any of the UXG models, which includes:

• UXG Lite
• UXG Max
• UXG Pro
• UXG Enterprise

The USG and USG Pro do support Smart Queues, but these devices are now unsupported in new releases of the UniFi Network Application. It is recommended to upgrade to a UXG model if you are using a USG in production.

How to set up UniFI Smart Queues

Log into the UniFi Network dashboard and go to Settings

Then Internet

If there are multiple WAN connections, select the one that you want to enable Smart Queues on

Set the Advanced toggle to Manual

Then enable Smart Queues

For the numbers, you want some overhead when enabling Smart Queues. So for example, if you have 50mbps download from your ISP, you could enter in 45mbps and then same for upload too.

Once done, click Apply Changes

How to test to see if it has worked?

There are various tools available online, such as Waveform’s Bufferbloat Test which runs multiple latency tests with and without load to test whether your network suffers from bufferbloat. Run this test before and after enabling Smart Queues to see if it has made a difference or not.

Otherwise, the UniFi Network Application has other options for enabling QoS on networks, clients or for particular applications, such as Windows Update.