Question How to Optimise Router Settings for Online Gaming?

[very_452001]

Hello,

I bought a xbox series x with game pass ultimate for my younger brother who like to play online competitively. Don't want him touching my PC lol.

I logged into my router and see these settings:

• Enable QoS
• Enable DMZ
• Address Reservation
• Airtime Fairness

Which settings above shall I enable for my xbox and in what correct order do I enable these settings and how do I do this correctly?

If I enable Airtime Fairness then will affect the other 3 settings in the above list, will Airtime Fairness effect QoS for the xbox?

 

[bill001g]

First and most important you should never use wifi for online gaming if you have any other option.

The most common issue is interference that causes data retransmissions. This causes random delays between the packets. This causes few issues for most applications. Online games are the exception. They use the timing between the packets to sync the client and the server so it can use the delays to predict future in game positions. If you do not have consistent delays this feature will not work correctly and you will get lag.

There are no setting you can do to prevent interference since it likely is coming from outside your house.

All these settings are related to controlling machine inside your house and you seldom have a lack of either internet or wifi bandwidth just for your own devices.

QoS and airtime fairness are very different things. QoS only deals with the traffic going lan/wan. It does nothing if you are not exceeding your bandwidth but it does control all clients traffic both wifi and lan.
The airtime fairness thing in general is a gimmick. It does very little. You seldom have so much wifi traffic that it exceeds your wifi bandwidth so the feature does nothing really. In addition it can only affect the traffic from the router to the end device not the other way around. Traffic goes both ways and there is no real way to control how or when the end clients transmit.

You are better off using none of them. Your key goal should be to not use wifi for online games in the first place.

 

[very_452001]

Okay do you mean QoS only works with Ethernet wired not wifi? Does Wan mean wifi or does it mean the bigger whole Internet?

Bandwidth means my ISP Internet download speed correct?

I thought Airtime Fairness stops the 1st come 1st served wifi connected devices hijacking all the speed so later joined wifi devices don't get slower speeds, Airtime fairness makes all wifi connected devices get equal speeds correct?

What about DMZ and address reservation for the xbox? Does this improve online gaming not just in speed/latency but in opening more online features?

I could connect ethernet to xbox for wired, but got to figure out for myself hot to run wire from router in my room to his bedroom. Once ethernet wired is connected do the settings in the list above still apply for further optimisation for wired ethernet?

 

[bill001g]

QoS works with all traffic going between the internet (ie wan) and anything in your house both ethernet and wifi. Both ethernet and wifi are considered lan and QoS does not function between lan devices.

It doesn't matter who joins first or second. Lets say one of your wifi device is going to copy some huge files off a NAS that is connected via ethernet in your house. Your other device is lets say watching netflix off the internet. It will to some extent prevent the file copy from disrupting the netflix.

This is a fairly extreme example. You have to have something running that has the ability to consume almost all the wifi bandwidth. If you were downloading from the internet rather than a local NAS then you would likely exceed your internet bandwidth well before the wifi so airtime fairness thing will not do much.

So before you get too side tracked do you actually have a problem that you are overloading your internet or wifi. If not then none of these feature do anything and you run the risk of it actually degrading your service just turning it on. Just enabling the QoS feature on most routers will cap the internet speed to about 300mbps because of the cpu load.

DMZ and address reservation have nothing to do about performance. It is purely related to the game hosting function used by some console games.

If you can get wired ethernet you can run with nothing else set on the router.

 

[very_452001]

Okay what it is there's lots of devices in the house connected to wifi. Specially in the evenings/nights when those devices are all connected to wifi at the same time. Lets say all these devices are streaming Netfix in 1080p or 4k at the same time. Does this overload internet/wifi? If so at this moment will QoS enable a specific device such as a xbox to have more priority over other devices to have more bandwidth from the router?

What about the router that has a quad-core cpu, will QoS still cap the internet speed?

Yeah I get confused between QoS and Airtime Fairness, so QoS is Airtime Fairness for a specific device and Airtime Fairness is Generally Auto QoS for all devices right? If so enabling both of these features at the same time doesn't make sense

Yes he host online parties or whatever it is for games that he plays, do you know how to put the xbox in DMZ or address reservation, or which is done 1st please?

 

[bill001g]

You can put the xbox in the dmz but it is not recommended since the xbox can then be attacked. Better off forwarding the ports for just the particular game or wait until something does not work to set it up. Xbox uses UPnP to dynamically open ports which is also a security exposure but not as bad as dmz.

How fast is your internet connection. 4k netflix is only about 25mbps and 1080 is far less. QoS only matters if you are going to exceed the bandwidth. There is no need to choose which traffic to send first if there is never a queue of data to choose from it all gets sent immediately.

QoS has many option it is not so called "fair" you can configure it so 1 device get 99% of the bandwidth even if it is not using it. It all depends on how you configure it. Airtime fairness is only between the router and the end device it does not take into account the internet bandwidth. It tends to do nothing because the wifi bandwidth is so high compared to the internet bandwidth.

Things like QoS and encryption are single thread process so they can only use 1 core. That though is not the key reason it is slow. It is not the QoS rules that actually slow it down...although they make it worse. All modern routers have moved the NAT function off the cpu onto a special hardware accelerator. This special hardware allows the router to the NAT function at gigabit wan/lan speed. Problem is the traffic has been moved off the CPU chip. To do QoS the CPU must see the data so in addition to doing the QoS function it must do the NAT function that was previously being done by the hardware.

 

[very_452001]

I opened up my router instruction manual and is states Air time Fairness ATF stops older wifi 3, wifi 4 and wifi 5 devices making newer wifi 6 devices slower. I have a wifi 6 router, and there's wifi 6 devices in the house such as iphones, samsung phones etc. How does older wifi 3, 4 and 5 devices make newer wifi 6 devices slower with ATF off?

Are there hackers out there that target xbox and consoles?

Any other settings in the router that I should look out for?

Cheers,

 

[bill001g]

Question would be do you ACTUALLY have wifi6. A lot of wifi6 device only support 80mhz radio bands rather than 160mhz. This makes it pretty much the same as wifi5 which also uses 80mhz.

I would hope you do not have many device that use older than wifi5 so it all will be pretty much the same.

This is mostly marketing except if you would run really old stuff like 802.11b or 802.11a. Again it is not likely any issue unless you are using all your wifi bandwidth. I mean if you have someone running torrents in your house you are going to have issues. But normal traffic seldom even comes close to the maximum wifi rates.

Hackers scan every possible IP all the time looking for machine they can compromise. You see all kinds of people posting here because their router firewall is complaining about someone scanning. In general a console is a stupid box so it has less software holes. It is likely though that the hacker will be able to tell it is a console based on the way it responds to the scans even if they can't get in. If there was ever some bug in the future they would have lists of machine to quickly attack before a patch comes out.

Your very best setting on the router are to run everything in default mode. Do not use any feature you do not know exactly why you need. A lot of very simple things can for example disable the hardware nat function and you cap the router speed. The router is the most secure when it does not have any dmz/port forwarding etc. Any hacker traffic trying to scan will just get dropped purely because the router is too stupid to know which internal device to send the traffic to so it throws it away.

 

[very_452001]

Okay wifi 5 and wifi 6 devices that both run on the 80mhz frequency that are both connected to a wifi 6 router are exactly the same, apart from speed/latency there's no differences at all between these 2?

Lets say there's wifi 4 and wifi 5 devices in the house connected to a wifi 6 router. Enabling ATF makes sure wifi 5 devices have faster speeds over wifi 4 because wifi 5 suppose to be faster than wifi 4 otherwise both wifi 4 and wifi 5 devices will have the same speeds with ATF disabled?

Why would a hacker target a xbox or a games console?

What benefits will a user see when disabling the hardware NAT function, and also capping the router speed? Do you mean cap the router speed to your ISP internet speed?

 

[bill001g]

It doesn't work that way. The router will quickly switch between the different types of wifi sending data to each using whatever they support. There is no direct impact between the 2 data feeds unless you are using 100% of the radio bandwidth.
It would only really matter if you had multiple wifi device downloading data from say a local nas. Even if both where wifi5 it would not share real well but since wifi4 take more time to transfer the same data it would in effect hog more bandwidth.

Again don't worry about stuff like that. Using fancy features on a router when you don't actually have a problem just runs the risk of there being some strange bug in the feature.

Hard to say why they attack them. They attack pretty much everything including stuff like doorbell cameras. Maybe they could encrypt the console and try to blackmail for money. They used to load crypto mining software into machines. They also could use them as part of a botnet to run denial of service attacks. There are sites you can rent out these botnet and attack any company web site for a price.

Not sure if you want to call it a "benefit" turning off the nat. It will cap it some fixed value of between 200-300mbps depending on the cpu chip. If you internet is slower than that then it makes no difference.

The reason you would do this is a lot of the feature on the router will not function unless the CPU can see the data. A very common thing that require the CPU chip to see the data would be something like parental controls. But even much simpler stuff like getting performance data related to what sites are being accessed.
It though is not as bad as say running a vpn on the router which will cap it down to about 20-30mbps since the router cpu is doing encryption.

 

[USAFRet]

Why would a hacker target a xbox or a games console?

Every pubically accessible IP address is targeted every day.
Does not matter what it is...they are just sequentially scrolling through every IP range and address, waiting for some device to answer with "Hi! I'll let you in!"

In normal ops, your routers firewall throws those access requests away.
If a device is in a DMZ....it may respond.

 

[very_452001]

When you say disable the hardware Nat function, do you mean doing this will cap the speed to 200-300mbps?
Okay enabling VPN on the router itself will slow the router, even though the router has a quad core 4 cpu's in it?

Can router firmware updates get rid of strange bugs in the router features?

There's this other router setting that I see called Multicast, what is this? and underneath this multicast there's IGMP v2 or IGMP v3, which version shall I select?

 

[bill001g]

Yes it will cap the speed to 200-300mbps. There is very special electronics in the router do just do the nat. In effect it is another kinda of cpu so the traffic bypasses the main cpu chip.

Again number of cores means nothing to some application. Encryption/vpn is single thread and can only use 1 core.

I guess it depends on what firmware the vendors normally try to not have bugs. If you mean you don't like the way it runs then you can on some router run third party firmware. Problem is that means you can not use the hardware nat function.
Technically you can but you must re compile and link the router OS yourself there are licensing issues related to the code/driver that can talk to the hardware nat function.

You really need to stop looking at feature that you do not understand. If you do not understand it then you don't need it.

Multicast is a method of sending say live video over a network. It does not run over the internet, not sure why it was never implemented. Not sure why this feature is on consumer routers other than maybe to have a longer list of features.
The device you have is not actually a router so it can not actually support real multicast traffic which requires other protocols like PIM to run.

 

[very_452001]

I see NAT is enabled by default in my router settings. Shall I disable it as to your reply suggestion above?

If there's dedicated chips just for NAT in the router then why does it still bottleneck caps the speed when enabled?

Does Multicast helps with live video app such as Zoom?

 

[bill001g]

You have to have NAT to function. It is what allows your router to share the 1 IP you get from your ISP with all your machines.

The nat accelerator is not a separate chip it is on the same silicon at the cpu but it functions as a separate device in many ways. The nat accelerator function does not bottleneck the traffic it is the router cpu that bottlenecks the traffic.
There must be some technical reason that the traffic can not say first go to the CPU chip and then go to the nat accelerator. The way it works by default is for the traffic to go directly to the nat accelerator and the CPU chip be skipped.
Many routers do not have a setting to turn it on or off but if you use something like QoS then the traffic goes to the cpu chip and not the nat accelerator.

Zoom runs on the internet and mulitcast does not run over the internet. It also does not use multicase protocols. Multicast might only be used in large corporate network. It will never work in a home network. It is stupid to even have the feature on a home router.
Multicast is used to solve the issue of transmitting video over multiple routers and what you have is not even really a router to begin with.

 

[very_452001]

Your very best setting on the router are to run everything in default mode. Do not use any feature you do not know exactly why you need. A lot of very simple things can for example disable the hardware nat function and you cap the router speed.

Oh ok cheers, I got confused and thought your suggestion above was to disable the NAT.

Shall I disable ATF when most of the devices here are wifi 5 and wifi 6 devices connected to a wifi 6 router?

Is IGMP3 backwards comptabile with IGMP2? Okay this feature may be useless to me however I just like to optimise my router settings to the max you know what I mean to get the max out of it to justify what I paid for it. Your replies indicates all wireless routers are the same because most features in a router will be useless to the average user however if that's the case why there's a price range of between $40-$400 for wireless routers?

If my wireless router is not a router then what is it? The word router means route all traffic like a traffic warden officer on a busy street managing cars and traffic right and if there's only 1 device in the house connected via ethernet wired then router is not needed because there's no traffic only 1 car on the street road correct?

 

[bill001g]

I would just leave the ATF feature off. It only matters if you think you are going to overload your wifi network which is a different issues really.

IGMP/multicast feature is likely useless to all home users. There are a bunch of feature like that. Packet marking is another one that is worthless because ISP remove any markings and its not like you have multiple routers in your network where it matters. I think the manufacture just want a bigger list of feature for the stupid consumer that thinks if it has a list of 100 items it must be better than the one that only has 20 items that people really can use.

Most the more costly routers have things like multiple 5g radio chips or 10gbit data ports. You either have a need for those or you are wasting your money buying them. This is true for some of the software features. Why pay extra for say VPN support when you are not going to use it.
There are also quite a bit of routers sold on physical appearance. Some people want them to match the colors in their room...or maybe they want LED lights.

The key reason it is not a router is it can not actually "route" traffic. Home device are best called gateways. They take a single lan subnet and translate it to a single WAN IP address (ie the NAT).
A actual router will have multiple subnets connected to it. It will also communicate with other router using a routing protocol (like OSPF or BGP) so all the routers know which IP subnets are behind which routers. They can then build a optimum path though the network of routers.
Think of a company that has multiple offices and has a private network connecting them.

Since almost nobody needs multiple subnets in their house the consumer boxes do not have true router features. Why they call them that I don't know. You will notice that some actually do call them gateways.

 

[very_452001]

Okay you saying a home wifi network which is never overloaded no matter how many devices in the home connected to it unless devices start downloading files locally from a NAS lets say for example? Internet bandwidth and wifi bandwidth are 2 totally separate speeds. So you saying internet bandwidth is very unlikely to be overloaded in a home wifi network in a typical home with many devices connected to it?

Doesn't it cost the manufacturer more to implement those extra hardware/software features for a typical average priced router that customers will never use? Why don't manufacturers put these features in their high end more expensive router models?

Talking about VPN support built in routers, this applies VPN connection to all devices in the home regardless if the device wants a VPN connection or not? If a user enables the VPN feature within the router and cannot access a website because the website blocked that vpn ip address then the user has to manually log into their to router to disable vpn to get that website working? So from this isn't it best to enable vpn at the device end not at the router?

Or is VPN feature within a router is free to use with a open-source free provider or something?

Cheers,

 

[bill001g]

You have to remember we are talking huge bandwidth here. Its not like the old days where wifi ran at 20mbps and the internet connection ran a 10mbps. But back then people didn't try to watch 4k netflix either.
You actually have to work at it to use 100% of either your internet bandwidth or your wifi bandwidth. This is part of the "scam" ISP do. They sell you and your neighbor all the same 1gbit of bandwidth because they know that the actual usage is so little that everyone can think they have 1gbit to themselves.

It depends on the the VPN client software for the router. Some are much more powerful than others. You can set certain devices in your house to use the vpn and other to go directly. You can also say just send netflix traffic though the vpn and leave the rest go directly. That way you can say use a TV that can't load a vpn software on a vpn connection.

Almost all vpn run in routers is based on free to use standards. You see both openvpn and starting to be more common wireguard.

 

[very_452001]

Alright lets say an ISP advertise speed is 500Mbps, the router can do 1000Mbps only for local file transfer not for internet correct? You saying I and the neighbours share that single 500Mbps in the neighbourhood hence each house doesn't get the dedicated 500Mbps that each house paid for? This is the scam you meant?

Okay so people that cannot use the free vpn features built in routers because their routers don't support it have to pay for apps like NordVpn to use vpn connection at their devices end? NordVPN is another scam because openvpn and wireguard offer vpn connections for free?

 

[USAFRet]

Alright lets say an ISP advertise speed is 500Mbps, the router can do 1000Mbps only for local file transfer not for internet correct? You saying I and the neighbours share that single 500Mbps in the neighbourhood hence each house doesn't get the dedicated 500Mbps that each house paid for? This is the scam you meant?

The ISP has a pipe of size X coming to your neighborhood.
You and all your neighbors pay for whatever level of service they think they need and can afford.100-500-1000.

The liklihood of you and all your neighbors maxing out your particular level, all at the same time, is pretty much zero.
Just because you pay for a 500mbps connection does not mean you are using 500mbps all the time. Indeed, very rarely would just your house be using that.

Things like games, and even streaming video...don't take as much as people think.
Refreshing a web page or checking email...a couple of seconds.

Also remember, your throughput also depends on the server you are getting it from. Many many do not have the upload bandwidth to serve everyone their max speed all the time.

 

[bill001g]

Alright lets say an ISP advertise speed is 500Mbps, the router can do 1000Mbps only for local file transfer not for internet correct? You saying I and the neighbours share that single 500Mbps in the neighbourhood hence each house doesn't get the dedicated 500Mbps that each house paid for? This is the scam you meant?

Okay so people that cannot use the free vpn features built in routers because their routers don't support it have to pay for apps like NordVpn to use vpn connection at their devices end? NordVPN is another scam because openvpn and wireguard offer vpn connections for free?

There are 2 types of VPN. If you use a vpn service like nord to say watch netflix in another country it doesn't matter if you load software on your pc or you use the router there is a charge for that. Now there are some so called "free" vpn services instead of say a pay service like nord but many of these are very questionable.
The other type of VPN would be if you want to access your home network when you are away from the house. In that case you need router vpn features to be able to do it. This type since it is your house and say your phone you own both devices and do not have to pay a service.

The ISP overselling their network used to be much much worse back in the days when the ISP say only had 300mbps for all the customers on 1 section of cable with say 100 houses on it and offered 100mbps plans. If I take ATT for example which is one of the most advanced for now. They are using 10gbit GPON for the transport.
They sell anywhere from 100mbps to 5gbit plans. So very technically only 2 people could be transfering at 5gbit at the same exact time or 10 people at 1gbit. The technology though limits them to supporting at maximum 64 houses on 1 fiber. This is not as bad as it sounds because they have to have a connection for every house the fiber goes past just in case that person want to buy it. Not everyone will buy from att and the vast majority of people will likely not buy even the gigabit plan. The 5gbit one is $180/month.

Now I guess you could still have a couple of dumb teenagers running bit torrent from a few houses on 5gbit plans and max the fiber out. Since almost all torrent is illegal they will quickly get 0mbps internet when att gets complains from say the RIAA.

 

[very_452001]

The ISP has a pipe of size X coming to your neighborhood.
You and all your neighbors pay for whatever level of service they think they need and can afford.100-500-1000.

The liklihood of you and all your neighbors maxing out your particular level, all at the same time, is pretty much zero.
Just because you pay for a 500mbps connection does not mean you are using 500mbps all the time. Indeed, very rarely would just your house be using that.

Things like games, and even streaming video...don't take as much as people think.
Refreshing a web page or checking email...a couple of seconds.

Also remember, your throughput also depends on the server you are getting it from. Many many do not have the upload bandwidth to serve everyone their max speed all the time.

Okay lets say and ISP offers a 100Mbps service at $20 a month and a 500Mbps service at $50 a month. People who are buying the 500mbps are being scammed because they are not making full use of the 500Mbps service and hence could have got the 100Mbps at $30 cheaper per month?

 

[USAFRet]

Okay lets say and ISP offers a 100Mbps service at $20 a month and a 500Mbps service at $50 a month. People who are buying the 500mbps are being scammed because they are not making full use of the 500Mbps service and hence could have got the 100Mbps at $30 cheaper per month?

No.

Lets say there the overall pipe to your neighborhood is 5 gigabit.
You and 19 neighbors, so 20 houses.

They offer speeds of 100/100, 500/500 and 1000/1000.

5 / 20 accounts = 400megabit each, right?

No.

It is a shared resource.
If you sign up for the gigabit plan, and do a speedtest, you will see that full 1000.

If you and a couple of other neighbors, also on the gigabit plan were to do that...you 3 would also see that full gigabit performance.

Now...if ALL 20 of you were to do that same speedtest at exactly the same moment, then there would be issues.

However!!
That never happens.
The ISP knows, in great detail, how much traffic is actually used, and when.

They can oversell the neighborhood pipe, because the instances of congestion at that level is few and far between, bordering on never.

Also, marketing. All the ads you see make it seem like you need the uber speeds. 500megabits and up.
I posit that most people would be totally comfortable with a 100 megabit line.

Now, if you are routinely hosting a LAN party for a couple dozen friends, and you are all trying to download the newest game on that same residential pipe at the same time, then you might benefit from a full gigabit line.
But how many people actually do that?

Me, I have a 100/100 fiberoptic from Verizon FiOS. Just me and the wife, but we see exactly zero congestion or slowdown, in anything we do.
I could go up to a full gigabit, but there is exactly zero need.

 

[very_452001]

There are 2 types of VPN. If you use a vpn service like nord to say watch netflix in another country it doesn't matter if you load software on your pc or you use the router there is a charge for that. Now there are some so called "free" vpn services instead of say a pay service like nord but many of these are very questionable.
The other type of VPN would be if you want to access your home network when you are away from the house. In that case you need router vpn features to be able to do it. This type since it is your house and say your phone you own both devices and do not have to pay a service.

The ISP overselling their network used to be much much worse back in the days when the ISP say only had 300mbps for all the customers on 1 section of cable with say 100 houses on it and offered 100mbps plans. If I take ATT for example which is one of the most advanced for now. They are using 10gbit GPON for the transport.
They sell anywhere from 100mbps to 5gbit plans. So very technically only 2 people could be transfering at 5gbit at the same exact time or 10 people at 1gbit. The technology though limits them to supporting at maximum 64 houses on 1 fiber. This is not as bad as it sounds because they have to have a connection for every house the fiber goes past just in case that person want to buy it. Not everyone will buy from att and the vast majority of people will likely not buy even the gigabit plan. The 5gbit one is $180/month.

Now I guess you could still have a couple of dumb teenagers running bit torrent from a few houses on 5gbit plans and max the fiber out. Since almost all torrent is illegal they will quickly get 0mbps internet when att gets complains from say the RIAA.

Okay so the VPN features built in routers just allows you to remotely connect to your local network at home meaning any paid vpn service is not compatible with this feature? Routers/gateways without a vpn feature means you cannot at all connect to your home network from outside your home?

What if those teenagers use a vpn to hide their torrent activities, they can still continue?