[Closed] Router for gaming

Wireless or cat5?
VDSL/ADSL/Cable or separate modem?

I've been looking to replace my Plusnet branded HH5 and remain to be convinced the Draytek VDSL unit isn't the best. It's double your budget but to be honest 75 quid doesn't get you much.

If you're not wired in you should be.

Are you trying to stream and game on wireless at the same time? How do you know it's not your broadband speeds and not the router? What are your sync speeds on the router?

If you are gaming on wireless try and get a cable to the console or PC. It will make a big difference to the stability.

As above, I've never had issues gaming with standard routers that the isp provide, are you sure it's not your broadband or WiFi that's the bottleneck?

Hi. So extra info. Gaming computer is hard wired. Works great. Streaming over WiFi. Works great. Same time, gaming lags, streaming fine. Need something that does as above without the lagging. Realising that going to need to spend more. Other stuff I just don't know about. Broadband speed per speed test 32Mbps at the moment. Does that help for?

Are there any QoS settings you can play with on the home hub?
Usually there are.

When you say "streaming" what do you mean exactly?

Sounds like the streaming traffic is being allowed by the router to suck up the lions share of the bandwidth.

I'm no networking expert but it might be worth exploring what options your router has (if any) for prioritisation, Qos, etc. Before buying a new one.

Ok. Thanks.Will have a look at settings first.
Steaming - watching Netflix mostly.

Looking at settings. Not really got a clue on it. Also, don't want prioritisation, want all if possible. I don't want to flip to Netflix and problem and the gaming ok. Hmm. No easy answer without someone with knowledge sitting here I am beginning to think.

You need to prioritise the traffic somewhere though otherwise you get the problems you are having.

Also, don’t want prioritisation, want all if possible.

You can't fit a pint into a half-pint mug. Though that said, a 32Mbps connection should be up to doing both. Arguably, your gaming issue may have nothing to do with raw bandwidth but rather latency.

Prioritising isn't about raw throughput per se, it's about treating traffic differently. If you have a one second delay on a video it would be unwatchable; if you have a one second delay on a website you probably wouldn't even notice.

Are you streaming 4K video? Off the top of my head, Netflix recommends a 25Mbps connection minimum for that. Try knocking the quality down to 1080 maybe, see if that fixes it?

We only ever had issues on 20 meg standard broadband - no issues shifting to fibre - stream and two machines gaming at the same time.

It does sound as though something is wrong or the streaming is 4k as mentioned.

I have 30Mb broadband on standard sky router and have no issues gaming and the mrs streaming.

Definitely if you can QOS the console to take priority as it wont use a fat lot of bandwidth and the streaming is much cleverer at buffering so it wont lag like the console does when constrained.

I use an Apple Airport Express, 10ms ping times in Counter Strike.

Had no end of problems with the Home Hub, turns out BT have the ability the control their hubs from afar and mine was being reset every 20 minutes or so.

Have you asked BT if they would like to provide you with a free hub upgrade? They used to do that and the Home hub 3 is seriously old, last time I upgraded to the Home Hub 6 / Smart Hub just by extending my subscription.

Hi. So extra info. Gaming computer is hard wired. Works great. Streaming over WiFi. Works great. Same time, gaming lags, streaming fine.

Streaming appears to more resilient (i.e. gaming doesn't affect it, only vice versa) as it's less sensitive to lag because of the way it buffers. You can see this when you unplug the router watching Netflix/Iplayer as it'll still work for a period of time. However without any QoS, streaming might take up all of your bandwidth which is what sends your ping times through the roof.