How To Enable BBR on Debian 11

In this tutorial, we will show you how to enable BBR on Debian 11. For those of you who didn’t know, Enabling the BBR congestion control algorithm on Debian 11 can significantly improve network performance and provide a better user experience. The BBR algorithm dynamically adjusts the sending rate of packets based on the available network bandwidth and round-trip time (RTT) of packets, thereby maximizing the use of available bandwidth without causing congestion and packet loss.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step enable BBR on Debian 11 (Bullseye).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian-based.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• An active internet connection.
• A non-root sudo useror access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Enable BBR on Debian 11 Bullseye

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install linux-image-amd64

Step 2. Checking Current Congestion Control Algorithm.

Before enabling BBR on Debian 11, it is essential to check the current congestion control algorithm being used by the system. To do this, open a terminal and run the following command:

sudo sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control

This command will display the current congestion control algorithm being used by the system. If the output is “cubic” or “reno,” it means the system is not using the BBR algorithm.

Step 3. Enabling BBR Congestion Control Algorithm.

Run the following command below to enable the BBR congestion control algorithm:

sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf

Add the following lines:

net.core.default_qdisc=fq
net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=bbr

Save and close the file, then run the following command to apply the changes:

sudo sysctl -p

Step 4. Testing BBR Congestion Control Algorithm.

Once enabling the BBR congestion control algorithm, we can test its performance. To do this, we can use the iPerf3 tool, which is a network performance testing tool. To install iPerf3, run the following command:

sudo apt install iperf3

Next, run a network performance test using the following command:

iperf3 -c <your-IP-address>

Congratulations! You have successfully enabled BBR. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of Gitkraken on Debian 11 Bullseye. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Debian website.