interfaces-cake(5)

📦 version 0.13.0, in alpine 3.24

💅 interfaces-cake — the manual page, but make it make sense

okay bestie so this is the manual for interfaces-cake, which is the CAKE extensions situation for the interfaces(5) file format. yes that's a manual page name and a manual-section number both, we contain multitudes 💖

✨ NAME ✨

interfaces-cake — the CAKE extensions for the interfaces(5) file format. that's it, that's the name, slay 🎀

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so. CAKE. it stands for Common Applications Kept Enhanced, which is genuinely the most main-character acronym ever, and it's a shaping-capable queue discipline that uses both AQM and FQ. two icons, one queue. 💅

every single parameter for CAKE is optional, which is lowkey generous of it — but ngl most applications would benefit from specifying a bandwidth estimate. the overhead and RTT parameters can also give you meaningful tuning for a lot of applications, if you happen to have info about the underlying link technology (iykyk).

heads up bestie: go read tc-cake(8) for the details on all the parameters, plus the guidance on how to pick them for different applications. that's where the deep lore lives. ✨

if you're sitting there like "idk what to do 😭" — try setting the bandwidth parameter to the link rate of your modem, or to the rate you find with an egress speed test. boom. you're a network engineer now. 🫶

👑 CAKE OPTIONS 👑

  • cake-args complete_cake_arguments — if you provide this, the whole set of arguments gets passed directly to tc-cake(8). if you already know your CAKE config you can literally just paste it here, no modification needed. and the plot twist: all other parameters are ignored if this one is set. it's giving "I'm the captain now". 💀
  • cake-bandwidth rate — the transmission rate of the interface, in floating-point bits per second, with an optional unit like 124.5Mbit. there is no default, which is equivalent to disabling the overall bandwidth limit. so like, no cap. literally. 🌈
  • cake-rtt time — round-trip transmission delay for typical traffic on this interface. Default: internet
  • cake-tins queue_set — specifies the set of queues and related tuning CAKE will use. Default: diffserv3
  • cake-isolation isolation_type — specifies the data used to hash flows within each queue. Default: triple-isolate
  • cake-nat boolean — do a NAT lookup before flow hashing. can improve fairness among hosts behind NAT translations performed by this router. Default: false
  • cake-wash boolean — clear all extra diffserv (but not ECN bits) after priority queuing has taken place. Default: false
  • cake-split_gso boolean — disable GSO (General Segmentation Offload) to improve latency. many applications under 10Gbps should use the default: true
  • cake-ack ack_filter_type — select the type of ACK filtering used in CAKE. this can be useful on asymmetric links where ACKs are likely to get queued. Default: no-ack-filter
  • cake-memlimit bytes — limit the overall memory use of CAKE for this interface. there is no default 🙈
  • cake-fwmark mask — override tin selection with firewall marks and this mask. there is no default
  • cake-atm atm_compensation_type — apply ATM or PTM compensation when calculating overhead. Default: noatm
  • cake-overhead bytes — per-packet overhead, used to derate the overall bandwidth to compensate for the difference between the in-kernel packet size and the on-wire packet size. Default: raw, which uses the kernel's packet size without compensation
  • cake-mpu bytes — minimum on-wire packet length, used to derate the overall bandwidth for packets where the calculated raw size + overhead would be smaller than this number. there is no default
  • cake-ingress boolean — enable ingress mode. typically this would be used with an IFB device to apply shaping to ingress traffic. Default: false

🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

🌱 Minimal configuration

like, the bare minimum. the "just got out of bed" fit:

auto foo
iface foo
     use cake

⭐ Typical configurations

this one shapes ingress traffic to 1 Gbps while applying docsis (cable modem) overhead compensation. iconic behavior honestly:

auto foo
iface foo
     use cake
     cake-bandwidth 1Gbit
     cake-overhead docsis

and this one shapes ingress traffic up to 1 Gbps while applying ethernet + ether_vlan (Ethernet with tagged VLAN) overhead compensation and ACK filtering. that's the full glow-up:

auto foo
iface foo
     use cake
     cake-args bandwidth 1Gbit ethernet ether-vlan nat ack-filter

💫 All available options

the whole entire wardrobe. every option, one outfit:

auto foo
iface foo
     use cake
     cake-bandwidth 1Gbit
     cake-rtt internet
     cake-tins diffserv3
     cake-isolation triple-isolate
     cake-nat false
     cake-wash false
     cake-split_gso true
     cake-ack no-ack-filter
     cake-memlimit 20000K
     cake-fwmark 0x0
     cake-atm noatm
     cake-overhead raw
     cake-mpu 84
     cake-ingress false

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

interfaces-cake-ingress(5) and tc-cake(8) — go read them, they're the supporting cast and they ate 💜

and that's the page bestie!! no cap, you now know CAKE better than most people know their own wifi password. this lil write-up is interfaces-cake(5) and it's dated 2026-05-10 — so go forth, shape that traffic, and remember: bandwidth is a vibe check and you're passing it 🎀✨💖

📦 where this page comes from