Does Port Forwarding Slow Down Wireless Network?

[FlightJunkie]

So here's the situation: I live at home while going to college. My mother works for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and sometimes works from home by connecting to their VPN. We recently upgraded from a Netgear Nighthawk 1900AC router to an ASUS RT-AC87R 2400AC router in order to get a better wireless signal down into the basement where I stay. When I got Call of Duty Black Ops 3 in November, I forwarded some ports according to this webpage.

My mother complains that her connection is slow, and that she can't get work done. She blames it on me being on the computer playing games on steam (non-multiplayer) and sucking up all of the bandwidth. We have a 30mbps internet connection. My father assumes that it's because I opened up the ports on the router. However, my PS4 is always off when my mother works. I assume that because I opened the ports to the PS4, that it would suck up a ton of bandwidth if I was using it while playing Black Ops 3. That's why I keep it turned off while my mother works. My father assumes that the PS4 is still using up tons of bandwidth even though it's turned off.

My mother has complained about how the bars on her computer (the ones that show how strongly you are connected to the wireless network) keep alternating between two, five, and three bars despite her being directly next to the router. We can't hardwire it in due to some policy that her work has, so it has to be wireless. I assume that it's either one of three possibilities: 1. Her network card in her computer is about to go out 2. Her VPN is super slow or 3. Her connection to her VPN is weak.

So would any of you guys be willing to shed some light on this situation? Would opening those ports cause my internet to run slower for my mother? What is the most likely problem that's causing her connection to be slow?

 

[bill001g]

Your assumptions are pretty much correct. Port forwarding is a simple translation table it does not create traffic in any way. If the PS4 is off then it can not cause bandwidth. Your PC you can easily see how much bandwidth you are using in the resource monitor but it is unlikely you are using 30m playing any game.

It almost has to be wireless related. I can't believe a company requires wireless that is a support nightmare. You really need to cable it to test to be sure.

Wireless is tough to fix you can get interference sitting on top of the router. Best option is to use only a single channel 802.11n. Not sure if you can change this on only a single pc. You could go into the router and set it to only use 20mhz channels. This will in effect make your fancy router into a 150m router. The problem is to use 802.11ac you need to run a block of 4 channels. There are only 2 4 channel blocks so your odd of getting a conflict with a neighbor are very high as well as if someone uses just 1 channel out of the 4 they will cause interference if you try to use all 4. On the 2.4g is it similar because if you try to use 40mhz that is 2/3 of the total bandwidth so only 1 person can run 40mhz channels.

So your best option to fix wireless is to use only 1 channel and try to find one nobody else is using. Even though in theory it is slower it many times is faster because you are getting less errors.