[SOLVED] Really bad lag when trying to play games with my brother

[CTRLALTDEL98]

This is an issue that's been bugging me for a while and I've not be able to figure out what's causing it. I can't play games with my brother because of really bad lag. I'm pretty sure this started around the time I switched to PC, but it could have also been the fact we got a new router because we were having issues with the old one. I've tried Apex on PC with my brother, Mordhau on PC with my brother, Forza Horizon 4 with me on PC and him on Xbox, CoD MW with me on PC and him on Xbox and all of them lag terribly. When we first got our new Fibre internet about 3-4 years ago there were no issues, 76mbps down, 20mbps up... Absolutely brilliant, we'd play Battlefield 4 no issues for hours on end. Can't do that now and It's pretty annoying. For context, I play wired on PC using a powerline adapter, my brother also uses a powerline adapter for his PC and WiFi for his Xbox. Also, we don't lag when playing alone, or with other people just strictly when we're playing together in the same game. If anyone could give me any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Ralston18]

Make and model new router? What were the issues with the old router?

How are the connections being made?

E.g.:

ISP---fibre---->router[LAN] --ethernet cable --> powerline adapter ==AC wiring==powerline adapter --ethernet cable --->PC

With your brother also having (from the router)

[LAN] --ethernet cable --> powerline adapter ==AC wiring==powerline adapter --ethernet cable --->PC

Edit and correct my line diagram as necessary. Or just provide your own sketch.

How many powerline adapters?

Any other wired and wireless devices beyond his Xbox. Does he turn that off when you game together?

All in all the available bandwidth may be an issue.

Who has full admin rights to the new router?

 

[CTRLALTDEL98]

Make and model new router? What were the issues with the old router?

How are the connections being made?

E.g.:

ISP---fibre---->router[LAN] --ethernet cable --> powerline adapter ==AC wiring==powerline adapter --ethernet cable --->PC

With your brother also having (from the router)

[LAN] --ethernet cable --> powerline adapter ==AC wiring==powerline adapter --ethernet cable --->PC

Edit and correct my line diagram as necessary. Or just provide your own sketch.

How many powerline adapters?

Any other wired and wireless devices beyond his Xbox. Does he turn that off when you game together?

All in all the available bandwidth may be an issue.

Who has full admin rights to the new router?

The router is just a standard router (Sagemcom PlusNet Hub One) that comes when getting Plusnet Fibre Extra, so it's definitely not the best but to say we never had issues before is what confuses me. Truth be told I can't actually remember what was up with the previous router, probably changed it about 1yr - 1yr 6 months ago because the WiFi wasn't working at all and even PlusNet couldn't figure out what was happening so they just gave us a new router.

And yeah, those diagrams seem to be right, we have 3 powerline devices total, 1 powerline downstairs that is connected to the router that feeds to both of ours upstairs, which is what I thought might have been the issue but I'm not good with this type of stuff.

And yeah, we have a few wireless devices in the house like 4 mobile phones probably, a laptop (mainly used for things like word docs, spreadsheets etc so it's not really using up much bandwidth) a PS4, which is mainly used offline tbh and then obviously his Xbox, and yeah he turns it off when we try and play PC.

Me and my brother have admin rights to the router.

 

[Ralston18]

Are you familiar with the ping command?

From your computers take turns pinging your router's IP address while turning other devices on and off.

Then ping the other devices: the laptop, PS4, and even each other's computer.

The intent is to discover some internal network path that may be or has become a bottleneck.

If a path with high latency is discovered, then the next step is to look along that path for hardware, wiring, configuration issues, etc..

Just take your time, be methodical and watch for some definite issue that can be constantly repeated.

The router's logs, if available and enabled, may be worth watching as well.

 

[CTRLALTDEL98]

Are you familiar with the ping command?

From your computers take turns pinging your router's IP address while turning other devices on and off.

Then ping the other devices: the laptop, PS4, and even each other's computer.

The intent is to discover some internal network path that may be or has become a bottleneck.

If a path with high latency is discovered, then the next step is to look along that path for hardware, wiring, configuration issues, etc..

Just take your time, be methodical and watch for some definite issue that can be constantly repeated.

The router's logs, if available and enabled, may be worth watching as well.

I've been pinging everything in the house, all is fine. Routers in an average of 4ms, highest I'd seen is 7ms. Everything else is basically 4ms average, no packet loss. However when my brother tried to ping my PC he got "Request timed out" all 5 times he tried. I assume that means that my PC is the issue here?

 

[CTRLALTDEL98]

Right, a very quick update. I've just gone into control panel > network and internet > network and sharing centre > advanced > turn on network discovery as it was off. Also gone into services to see if UPnP was running and it wasn't, now my brother is able to ping my PC and is getting 3ms average, no packet loss. When I'm able to I'll try and test some games with him to see if it's sorted it

 

[CTRLALTDEL98]

Are you familiar with the ping command?

From your computers take turns pinging your router's IP address while turning other devices on and off.

Then ping the other devices: the laptop, PS4, and even each other's computer.

The intent is to discover some internal network path that may be or has become a bottleneck.

If a path with high latency is discovered, then the next step is to look along that path for hardware, wiring, configuration issues, etc..

Just take your time, be methodical and watch for some definite issue that can be constantly repeated.

The router's logs, if available and enabled, may be worth watching as well.

So, enabling upnp on my PC has done the trick. For some reason it has been disabled on my PC ever since I built it...

 

[Ralston18]

Just for the record; how did you discover the upnp problem and how did you enable upnp?

 

[CTRLALTDEL98]

Just for the record; how did you discover the upnp problem and how did you enable upnp?

I was scrolling through a few different threads regarding Apex Legends. At launch nobody could play with somebody else on the same network as them, soon as you did it would kick one of you off the game. Somebody had posted a comment on that thread saying that for him all he did was disable upnp on his router and PC and it worked... I also had to look up exactly what upnp does and means... So I was looking through the control panel to the parts he had guided to in his post and realised that upnp was already off on my PC. I checked services as well and it was off and set to manual. So I thought I may as well try with it turned on. So turned it on and set it to automatic within services, restarted my PC just to make sure it was running on startup. Tried Apex, Forza, Mordhau and CoD again and it's all working. No lag, not booting one of us off. Just smooth sailing. Just want to thank you Ralston, because if you hadn't told me to ping his PC then I probably wouldn't have found out that it was my PC that was the issue all along, so thank you for that!

 

[madartzgraphics]

This is an issue that's been bugging me for a while and I've not be able to figure out what's causing it. I can't play games with my brother because of really bad lag. I'm pretty sure this started around the time I switched to PC, but it could have also been the fact we got a new router because we were having issues with the old one. I've tried Apex on PC with my brother, Mordhau on PC with my brother, Forza Horizon 4 with me on PC and him on Xbox, CoD MW with me on PC and him on Xbox and all of them lag terribly. When we first got our new Fibre internet about 3-4 years ago there were no issues, 76mbps down, 20mbps up... Absolutely brilliant, we'd play Battlefield 4 no issues for hours on end. Can't do that now and It's pretty annoying. For context, I play wired on PC using a powerline adapter, my brother also uses a powerline adapter for his PC and WiFi for his Xbox. Also, we don't lag when playing alone, or with other people just strictly when we're playing together in the same game. If anyone could give me any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated!

Lots of possible answer i don;t really know where to start. But..

There are ISP's throttling their consumers (like ours), if you hit the target monthly limit, they'll throttle you to their desired speed. Another issue there is network traffic. This is the reason why I don't use my ISP's DNS because when I try to surf on a broad day light well it's pretty slow, but at night, it's ultra fast.

Another thing to consider is Ping. This is very important. The higher the ping, the higher chance you'd receive a network lag. Are you using any sort of network tunneling like a VPN? VPN slows down your network connection.

You better measure your download and upload speed and the ping using speedtest by Ookla. You can also read if your ISP changed their terms and conditions. These companies are pretty shady when it comes to throttling.