Question Advice on buying a gaming router ?

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Widow1

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Mar 24, 2019
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Hello!
I have a few questions to ask about gaming routers.
I'm thinking about buying one and as far as I know you connect it onto your modem-router.
Will my normal modem-router I have from my ISP be enough ?
The reason I want to buy a gaming router is for QOS and basically internet allocation to my gaming PC.
My internet is fine but when people are home watching videos and movies my games lag.
Thanks a lot!
 
So almost all so "gaming" routers are garbage. At very best they have preset preference for a very small number of game that they recognize. What you are paying extra for is that a dev at the router company loaded some preconfigured QoS rules so that you did not have to type them in. The rules actually pretty easy to do yourself but are also pretty worthless which I will explain below.

Before I get into the big messy discussion of QoS the best solution is to always buy enough bandwidth so all your applications can run at the same time. Can you just buy more internet bandwidth......

So this is long and complex.

You only need QoS if there needs to be a choice which data to send first. When there is enough bandwidth all data will be sent with little to no delay. You only need to mess with this if you are hitting 100% load...or more exactly if you are trying to exceed 100%. In this case something has to be discarded. It all depends on which traffic you find more important, some people would say netflix was more important than their kid who doesn't pay the bills game traffic. This is not a technical issue it is more a family issue as to what traffic is more important. Another reason a ISP does not want to even think to mess with this issue.

The key issue the ISP will not do any kind of QoS with your data. You can control outbound...ie upload.. data priority but you have no control over what the ISP sends. There is no solution if the ISP were to send a packet for netflix and discard a packet for a game. By the time your router figures this out there is nothing it can really do.

So almost all so called QoS solutions that try to affect download traffic attempt to trick the application on the end device into requesting less traffic. This is a very complex topic related to a topic call window size. What the router does is even though the ISP sends the traffic when the router receives it if the traffic is to be limited it will pretend it never got it and discard it. The hope is that this causes enough data loss for the end device request traffic a slower rate. Again very much oversimplification. This should in theory then leave enough bandwidth for the machine that needs the traffic.

So in some routers you can more or less just say xxxx device get a minimum bandwidth. This will limit all other device. It kinda works and kinda doesn't.

There is a much more advanced form of QoS that attempt to treat all traffic as equal rather than having to put rules in for each device or game. This mostly helps game traffic which is why you see it on forums like this. It doesn't help other traffic as much if you would need to prioritize it. It also has lots of trouble with the newer download methods used by steam and other gaming sites that running multistream downloads similar to how torrent works.

So if you still really want to do this I would look for a asus router that can run the merlin firmware. It has a number of option but if you look for the terms bufferbloat and maybe "cake" you will find discussion on setting stuff up like this.

BUT this really only works well on smaller connections, say under 100mbps. This is also tends to be the ones that actually need to have a QoS solution. The problem is any form of QoS put a huge load on the router cpu and they are tiny. If you had say 1gbit internet you would be capped by these type of policies to under 100mbps in many cases.

Then again if you have a big internet connection more than 100mbps you have very strange traffic. The only thing that can realistically overload that is large downloads. You are going to be better off trying to get everyone who shares the connection to use the options in most downloaders to limit how much bandwidth they request rather than trying to enforce something with some router. This again gets into non technical issues, if you have some teen who just can't resist using torrent to download questionable stuff 24x7 that is a different issue. Note even very fancy qos can't stop torrent it is designed to bypass restrictions from when ISP tried to use QoS to limit torrents.
 
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Really appreciate the time you took to type all this!

My connection is 100/10mbps.
I can't upgrade my connection as that is the max I can get right now and will probably wont get any faster soon(in 2-3 years maybe).
I literally get ping spikes from just a tab of twitch stream at 1080p on another PC, without that my internet is almost perfect most of the time.
I've been looking onto streaming many years now and if this could help fix my issues that would be really nice.

I was looking at the Asus RT-AX82U router.
Do aftermarket routers require good modem-routers or are they gonna work well on a standard ISP given one ?
 
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82u is not on the merlin supported list. Asus has taken some of the QoS stuff from merlin into the base firmware but I am unsure if they can do stuff like cake.

100mbps is actually a lot of bandwidth. You would have to have multiple people watching 4k netflix at the same time to use up bandwidth. It tends to almost always be download traffic causing issue.

If you are running your game on wifi then none of the above applies. There is no form of QoS for wifi all the device just try to get as much as they need and stop all over each other
 
I'm using LAN, I'd never use wifi personally.
I'm really confused how that happens from just a tab of 1080p stream on a 100mbps bandwidth tbh.
I literally was watching a graph of ingame ping and as soon as the stream was open my ping was going from 43 to 65, graph looked like a heart rate and as soon as it was closed the graph was literally a straight line.
 
Are you opening the stream on the same machine? That could be some strange limitation of resources in the machine.

This is messy to say. A game uses almost no bandwidth,less than 1mbps. a 1080p stream in most cases uses under 10mbps. So if that was all that was running you would only be using 11mbps and still have 89 left.

So I would try to see if your router has a any indication about how much bandwidth you are using. I would check the upload rates also. For most people there is very little upload traffic but if you were to stream on say twitch you can easily upload 6-8mbps which quickly cuts into the 10mbps.

I would also check to be sure you do not have any fancy features turn on in your router. Routers have very small cpu and if they hit 100% you will see delays. It can be anything from QoS to firewall to parental controls. If you are pretty sure you are not exceeding your bandwidth you purchase from the ISP I would do a factory reset on the router. You then want to set only the admin and wifi passwords. Most the other "stuff" is disabled by default on many router.
 
Stream was open on different pc aswell. Opening stream on my pc doesnt add that much latency which confuses me even more.
I'll give the other pc a check tomorrow aswell as giving it some ethernet settings in case something weird is happening.
I'll also check the router and give it a factory reset.
If I had to guess my router must suck so that could be a cause too I suppose ? Maybe thinking of getting a modem-router instead isnt that bad of an idea.

I feel like the old times when I had 10mbps and a video on youtube would lag the whole internet. Pretty sad tbh.
 
I would always buy a separate modem and router. Most combo units are very simplistic...ie not even basic QoS stuff.
Being able to bypass the router to test is very helpful. The downside is the cost of buying 2 boxes tends to be more but does allow much more choice in router features.

If you currently have separate units try to plug your pc into the modem. But it will likely work fine since it seems it only happens when other machines are using the internet and you can only have 1 device connected to the internet if you do not have a router in the path.
 
I only have a standard one that acts as both a modem and a router. The one the ISP gives you. It's pretty bad and old as I cant even find the firmware update no matter how hard I try.
Maybe that is the cause after all and it needs to be changed ?
Could get a fritz box maybe? I read that it helped many people with similar issues as mine.
The negative thing is that I will have trouble with VOIP because my ISP wont share it.
 
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You can't generally update the firmware on a modem/router combo unit even if you own it. The ISP is responsible for that, they need to keep all the firmware at the same level so it makes it easier for them to manage the network. This is another example of why a separate modem and router is a better solution. The ISP will still maintain the modem software but there is nothing you really want to need to change in a modem. The router will be in your full control.

From what I can tell fritzbox is just another brand of router. Can't say if it any different than say netgear or tplink etc. It seems to have somewhat more features than some of the value brands like buffalo and especially all those unknown brands direct from china.

Almost all brands of routers with similar specs are the same internally. All the chips are made by companies like broadcom or meditek. Most the key function like wifi are done in firmware provided by the chipset vendor.

The difference are some of the fancy feature like vpn or firewalls etc. Silly "gamer" qos is also a bit different between vendors.

In general you do not want to use any of this for optimum performance. Even the very cheapest router can do 1gbit wan/lan when all it is doing is sharing the wan ip....ie the NAT function. The NAT function in modern routers is done by in the hardware chipsets so like wifi features the router vendor just uses the feature from the chipset maker they do not have their own software.

Needing VoIP is another one of the ISP scams to lock you into their expensive bundled plans and equipment. Not sure why ISP lock the VoIP stuff down. There are other options, used to see ads for magicjack all the time. I have not look at this in years but there are a lot of VoIP solutions that are not tied to the ISP. I know companies used stuff like zoom to move their corporate phone system to the cloud when everyone was working from home.

You are likely going to save money by going with a third party voip service which also gives you more option of modems. Like most people I stop using any form of landline when they started to charge more than cell service.....and they still wanted extra for long distance calls.
 
I'm really confused on what I can do to resolve my problem right now.

I just ended up testing for a few hours straight.
1 tab of 1080p twitch stream is what makes my ping completely unstable, I really dont get it.
Closing the stream literally makes my ping perfect. Even a tab of utube can spike me for a bit.

Check out this photo, this is actually measured as "good" it's usually even worse.

Tab open=
https://imgur.com/a/WtUYCap
View: https://imgur.com/a/WtUYCap

Tab closed=
https://imgur.com/a/svTCHqh
View: https://imgur.com/a/svTCHqh

https://imgur.com/a/NvEfJjK
View: https://imgur.com/a/NvEfJjK#IWm4es9



Problem is I don't have spare 150$ to test, I need to be as "sure" as I can that it's gonna do something before buying a modem-router or a gaming router.
But would connecting a gaming router on a bad modem-router really do anything or would the problems get transferred to the router too?
 
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What you have posted should not cause a issue in a game. A small amount of extra latency does not cause lag. If it gets to be a huge number like adding 100ms then it might but many people play with latency of over 200ms to a server. The servers have methods to predict location in the game and send you data taking into account the time it takes for the data to reach you.

What is much more important is if you get large spikes. These generally need to be well over 100ms to be able to see them and occur fairly frequently.

It is somewhat strange that just a small addition data stream would do anything to the latency but you are only seeing a extra 4ms on average and spikes of only 11ms extra. Maybe you did not capture one that show the issue. This will not cause anything that you can detect in a game.

Not sure you really need a way to see the problem.

What tends to work better is to leave ping commands to say 1.1.1.1 run constantly in the background while you play the game. You can then quickly switch over and see if you get a corresponding issue in the ping. Be care about interpreting the data problems that cause issues with a game are very obvious. Small spikes even in ping commands can be related to issues with the testing and not actual problems.
 
I added better pictures on the previous post, as it usually looks like that and not that much like the previous picture.
I do rarely get ping spikes that look like this even
https://imgur.com/a/ezEGQga
View: https://imgur.com/a/ezEGQga


I know it's not that much higher on the previous pictures but ping spikes are so often and literally make the game feel insanely bad, my bullets don't register when my ping is spiking like that. I don't even understand how it works and why that happens even.
I'd literally rather have 80 stable ms than have ping spikes.

Also if someone uses 30/100 mbps to download something the game will get a minimum of 10% packet loss during the whole download window and everything is very slow including browser pages.

Is there a possibility I have bufferfloat ? If so what can I do to fix it ?
 
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That one might be more of a issue.

So if you see packet loss during a download that generally is a issue with your internet connection. As the load increases you get more error packets...ie packet loss.

It depends on your modem but generally there is a screen that will show the signal levels...assuming you have a cable connection fiber works different. You can check these signal levels. Many times there also is a display that show how many error you are getting on each channel being used.

In most cases it is a cabling issue outside your house. You can check any cabling see to be sure all the connections are tight and do not have dirt or water in them. There is a tiny chance it is a modem issue but in this case it is a good thing when you lease the modem rather than own it. The ISP will always attempt to blame this kind of problem on the modem when it is yours.

Packet loss is actually something the ISP will send someone out to fix. Not sure why you get latency increases, although cable modem transmissions have some ability to do error correction it does not work like wifi where they re transmit data so it should not add that much time.

In any case I would call the ISP.


.....Note bufferbloat is mostly one of those myth things that silly gamers believe. Using buffers to store data when you exceed you internet capacity is a good thing for every application other than games. It technically allows you to get more bandwidth than you pay for very short periods of time. It only happens when you run at 100% utilization. What makes this worse is there are test sites that will tell you have bufferbloat even on a 5gbit internet connection. They intentionally overload the circuit to the maximum and of course buffers are used. The problem is the overloading not the buffer use.
 
Honestly every time something that uses internet starts I get a hit of packet loss. I had this issue for years and now its way better than it used to be. I still get CRC errors. I dont remember the other line numbers right now because I am not home but I will let you know as soon as I get back. ISP wont help me at all lately as they deny they can do anything for any of my problems. I tend to strongly believe a modem/router would help as thats the only thing I havent changed over the years but I dont know what to buy in order to solve it.
 
bill001g said:
You are likely going to save money by going with a third party voip service which also gives you more option of modems. Like most people I stop using any form of landline when they started to charge more than cell service.....and they still wanted extra for long distance calls.
Click to expand...
I have an Ooma for my landline. Several years now.
Box connected directly to the router, any router, and using my regular cordless phones.
$6/mo
 
Honestly I'll follow any suggestions, I can afford to give around 100 maybe 150 if I need a new modem/router.
It's been years. I need to finally resolve this somehow.
 
So I found out that I indeed have some bufferfloat.
Ping only increases by a little when download gets used but skyrockets when upload gets used.
Would getting some router and limiting download/upload with qos solve my problem ?
 
Remember you only get bufferbloat when they connection is run at 100%. The problem is lack of bandwidth not some magic buffer.
Your best method of fixing this is to try to determine what program is doing is who in your house is doing this. You need to tell them to stop using so much bandwidth.

Using any form of QoS is just that except you are enforcing the limitation.....this assumes that you can't control the software or maybe the person doing it. This can lead to massive non technical issues if you attempt this without a agreement.

Simple QoS in general will not fix this. In the simple systems you could just reserve all the bandwidth for your machine but that is more or less the same as unplugging the other machines.

The best form of QoS to fix this has a couple of names but you will see it referenced to as "cake" since that is one of the better ones. You will likely need third party firmware to get this, again asus routers running merlin is what most people are using.

Be aware there is no free lunch. This puts huge load on the CPU so it can limit you maximum throughput. Also because of the inefficiencies in how you have to set it up you will likely have to limit your bandwidth to about 80% of what you buy. So in effect you will be trading some of your bandwidth so the remaining part is more evenly distributed.

Again try to use non technical means to solve this first
 
I was thinking the exact thing, an asus router with merlin.
Honestly as I've said before the most normal thing is youtube with twitch, 2 normals applications will honestly give me spikes of 40-50 which I still don't undestand why as they don't even use 20mbps combined.
I had technicians over to check cables and stuff and everything is fine. ISP cannot help anymore as they claim from their side.

My bro games too so we wouldn't have a disagreement over this, only thing he does is game while listening to music and sometimes watches a twitch stream.
I'd trade 10-20% of my bandwidth if that would mean having smooth gameplay tbh, I rarely use internet for anything other than gaming anyway.
As I understand from my side you limit bandwidth in order to always have "reserve" and so that way you don't get lag in games ?
If getting an asus router with merlin would have a big chance of solving my issues, I'd order it tomorrow.

Also these are my stats right now.

https://imgur.com/a/dg8zk9w
View: https://imgur.com/a/dg8zk9w
 
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No way to say for sure but if you are only talking download you are not getting bufferbloat with only 20mbps used out of 100mbps. I guess there could be some issue with the firmware in your current router but again this is a blindly replace the device.
But you had said before you have VoIP ports this is going to make it extremely difficult to get rid of the ISP router.

Did you have the ISP check on the packet loss issue.
 
I had them check it and they couldn't find anything wrong.
Packet loss is fine unless someone is downloading with at least 30mbps speed which is still weird considering its only 30/100.
I've honestly changed everything so far other than the modem/router itself.
I do have VOIP yes, was honestly hoping that putting a router with advanced QOS on the current modem/router would solve the problems and if not will probably have to change ISP so I can have the VOIP codes.

I just dont know if connecting a router onto the current modem/router would help or if I need to completely get rid of it.
 
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IF I end up getting a router.
Do I need to set my router/modem to bridge so it only acts as a modem or is it "plug and play" by just connecting it via lan to wan?
 
That would be the best option if you can do it. You might not be able to do that because of the VoIP ports.
The main difference between a modem and a router is that a router processes IP addresses. VoIP means Voice over IP so it uses IP addresses.
 
I'll definitely get more details from my ISP before proceeding on buying a router.
It's still so crazy that a tab of twitch can cause that many spikes, at least now I know what's causing it.
Whenever I'm home alone games feel insanely good and every shot has been crispy.
 
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