Question What is the best WiFi solution for gaming?

[cole.yarbrough04]

I am going to get an AT&T 1gbps fiber internet in my house. I have been looking for extenders to boost my WiFi signal throughout my house (about 2500 square feet). I have come across the Amplifi HD gamers edition, which is basically a mesh system with a mesh router and two mesh points that is optimized for gaming by allowing for the prioritizing of ping over speed. The only problem with this is that the mesh points do not have an Ethernet port and I would like to connect my pc to the mesh point directly for more stability. I have an Ethernet port in my wall that connects to my modem but if I do not know if I would get the benefits of the gaming mesh system. I have also come across gaming routers. I am interested in these but was wondering if I could connect a gaming router upstairs to my modem downstairs using an Ethernet port in the wall that connects to the modem. If I got this I could connect an Ethernet port directly to my pc from the router. My questions are: Would I get the gaming benefits of the gaming mesh system by using an Ethernet port in my wall that connects to my modem? Is it more beneficial to get a gaming router rather than a mesh system (in terms of ping, stability, speed, and other features)?

 

[bill001g]

Best option for gaming is no wifi at all just use ethernet.

Don't buy into the marketing hype. MESH is pretty must wifi networking for dummies. People just want to plug things in the wall and magically wifi appears everywhere. This is mostly for people that do not have ethernet ports in other rooms. They are using wifi repeaters which is really bad even for normal traffic. You now have extra wifi signals that can be interfered with causing large ping spikes which can kill games.

There is no way to prioritize game traffic over other traffic on wifi. Wifi there is no central control at all it is half duplex. All the device listen and if they don't hear anyone they feel it is fine to transmit. This does not work well when you have lots of devices. It can also not solve the problem of the neighbors signals bleeding into your house damaging your data transmissions.

Bottom line never use wifi for gaming it is different than any other application. Other applications are not affected by tiny random delays like games are.

So called "gaming" routers are also mostly marketing hype. Maybe they should put some pretty RGB leds on it to make it go faster. There are 2 feature so called gaming routers have. The first is a form of VPN to special gaming vpn providers. They claim this can reduce the latency. It technically never should since VPN adds overhead but for some rare people, mostly in asia, the vpn may have access to a better fiber path than the normal network. There is of course a extra monthly fee to use these services.

The other feature a gaming router has is some QoS for dummies. It is a preconfigured settings that favor traffic to certain ip or ports. This is basically paying someone to configure your router rather than you do it yourself. BUT it all doesn't matter in your case. QoS only functions where there is a data queue. A choice must be made as to which data to send and which to delay or discard. You only get data queues when you have tried to send more data than will fit. If you are over using a gigabit connection you have much worse issues than gaming ping times to deal with.

So buy a good router for your main router. Use the ethernet wall jacks to connect your gaming and other equipment that needs good performance. You can hook AP to the ethernet ports to extend the wifi in your house. If you need multiple ethernet ports in the remote rooms just buy a cheap switch

 

[failboat]

Are you able to get wires to the gaming pcs and anything else doing large downloads?
Are there any clients that need wifi speeds > 100Mbs? Mostly high end stuff has good wifi. laptops, expensive smartphones, etc.

If you can wire everything that needs a fast connection then the wifi just needs to be fast enough for web browsing and social media etc. You won't notice a huge difference loading small amounts of data if you have 100Mbs wifi compared to 600Mbs.

mesh wifi is a last resort if you can't run ethernet to access points.

If ATT provides a router it's likely fast enough for 1Gbs. No need to buy another. Many can't actually NAT at those speeds so be careful adding one. You won't be able to run QoS or VPN from a router on 1Gbs either. you would have to build an machine with an i3, i5, or xeon E.