Today I compared the ping in the Netduma Router to the servers (actually most of the time I was connected to peer2peer hosts) and the ingame ping. And as I already though, the game gives me quite a heavy lag compensation of 40ms up to like 80ms at times.
Here are a couple of example screenshots:






Also I could see that the game wanted to match me with hosts that were like 1000km away from me, although Im sure in central europe are enough ppl playing the game. Which leads me to assume that the skill variable is pretty heavy in the matchmaking algorithm. Now- the game will not try to fill the whole lobby with good players, or ppl who have very good stats. But in my lobbies it does try to fill in at least 2-3 sweaty nerds, which the game then puts on the opposite team, and all the inexperienced Timmy Nothumb players on my team. It results in more or less me playing vs 3-4 players who know what to do, without any help from teammates, who just sit as 4 ppl in 1 room and move like ducks, crouching around the map.
Lag Compensation and SBMM are very noticable for me personally and absolutely annoying. If I at least had very good connection, I wouldnt mind the tryhard sweats as much. But the combination of both lag comp and sbmm, and then all the op trash gimmicks like 9-bang and many other character specials- that is really too much frustration to bother with.
In terms of Netduma, I was never gonna buy the actual Netduma router. But I wanted to buy a good "gaming" router, and saw that the Netgear had good specs. I figured, I might as well try the Netduma OS and get the Netgear XR500. So far I wouldnt say its a killer feature (NetdumaOS), it still cant do jack sheet against the lag compensation, that is applied by servers, not congestion from my side or anything else on my side.
If anything, Id say that Netduma is snake oil so far, dont buy their own R1 trash router for 200+ USD with trash hardware. If the Netgear didnt have top notch hardware specs, Id prolly just send it back, but because it does have top notch hardware and wifi, Im going to keep it.
But again- on the screenshots you see why Netduma is useless. I already set the geo circle to like 400 kilometers, which is very strict. And I have a low ping to the hosts, that I got placed to. However- you see that in the actual game my ping is 40ms higher or even 70+ms higher than the physical latency to the host.
A router wont be able to fix a trash netcode and trash hitregistration of a poorly coded game like bo4. So keep that in mind. If youre gonna want to buy a router with NetdumaOS, at least buy the netgear and dont pay 200+ USD for outdated garbge hardware in R1, which was revealed that it costs less than 50 usd for them to buy, which they then resell for like 220 USD...