Whenever a YouTube video is being played on our family network, whether it be wireless or on wired, all games experience lag.

[HonestLegend]

This has been happening ever since my family found out about YouTube, years ago. Whenever anyone watches a video on their phone, iPad, computer, etc, games that I play such as DotA 2 and Counter-Strike GO experience non-ping related lag. As in, when I play there is definitely some sort of lag going on where I teleport back and forth and it seems like the game is refreshing every .3 seconds or something. So everything looks like it's lagging, but when I check the ping in-game it turns out exactly as it would when I'm not lagging. I've tried fixing the problem many times before, and the only solution I have is turning off YouTube on every device. I want my family to be able to watch whatever they want, but I'd like to find a way they can do that without this lag happening. I've even tried using the QoS feature on our Netgear router, but that doesn't do anything. Thanks for reading.

 

[Titillating]

Definitely just sounds like regular latency related lag. Used to happen to me while playing WoW with family members streaming videos; was extremely frustrating, and I always looked like the bad guy when I complained. What kind of up/down speeds does your ISP currently provide? Could be that your network just can't handle that much traffic.

 

[mlga91]

Streaming videos from youtube requieres some of your connection bandwith, reduces the bandwith that you can use for a game, if your internet connection is not quick enough for streaming videos and gaming you'll experience a lot of lag. What you can do is to use a wired connection to your modem (ethernet) and disable wireless conections, if someone asks something to you, act like you now nothing, and blame your internet provider. Is eiher this or get a better conection, where are you from?

 

[HonestLegend]

Definitely just sounds like regular latency related lag. Used to happen to me while playing WoW with family members streaming videos; was extremely frustrating, and I always looked like the bad guy when I complained. What kind of up/down speeds does your ISP currently provide? Could be that your network just can't handle that much traffic.

I'm glad to hear that it didn't only happen to me. I have the same exact situation here at home, and I don't want to tell everyone to stop watching just because I'm playing a game. Besides, the internet plan we have should be enough for streaming without this sort of thing happening. We have the Ultimate internet plan from Time Warner Cable here that "claims" to have download speeds of "up to 50 Mbps" and upload speeds of "up to 5 Mbps". Here are the actual speeds from speedtest.net:

It's SO much less than what they say they provide. This is probably a problem, right? We've been TWC customers for a long time now, and I gave them a call around 7 months ago regarding upgrading our plan (we had the standard plan, 15 down 1 up) and I found out we were paying THE SAME EXACT amount for the ultimate plan! $65... I was upset and asked them if they were able to upgrade our internet speeds to the ultimate plan and we ended up not paying anything except for the new modem for it. Apparently the "old" plan-rates still held, even if we didn't know we can upgrade without paying ANYTHING.

Anyways, sorry for the rather dull story. So is there nothing I can do about this other than see if TWC can fix these speeds? Friends of mine have even lower plans than I do and they don't experience this sort of lag, I think. Could it have anything to do with the router we have? Just asking some questions. Thanks.

 

[HonestLegend]

Streaming videos from youtube requieres some of your connection bandwith, reduces the bandwith that you can use for a game, if your internet connection is not quick enough for streaming videos and gaming you'll experience a lot of lag. What you can do is to use a wired connection to your modem (ethernet) and disable wireless conections, if someone asks something to you, act like you now nothing, and blame your internet provider. Is eiher this or get a better conection, where are you from?

Haha, I do use a wired connection. My desktop and my brother's computer are the only devices that connect directly to the router. I don't think that's a viable solution though 😛 I'm from southern Texas. Internet here appears to suck D:

 

[Titillating]

You really shouldn't be having any severe latency issues with those speeds. I used to raid in WoW with less than a third of those speeds. Either way, this is definitely something to call TWC about and complain since you aren't even getting half of the advertised speeds. You can make some allowances, sure, but that's MUCH lower than what you are paying for.

Getting back to the gaming, is it possible that your router is configured in a way that would block certain ports or types of traffic? I can't imagine why you're getting rubberbanded like that with those speeds, unless it's actually hardware related and not due to your connection.

 

[James Mason]

try www.pingtest.net as well, that will measure the health of your connection.

You might also want to try a server that's not in mexico/florida (can't really tell from your pick) as the servers for youtube/ect are usually in california/arizona or something, and that will show a different result than just whatever server is closest to your location (which is only useful to see if your company is giving you the speed you pay for.

 

[Vynavill]

Sorry for the long post, I may have went slightly overboard 😛

Pingtest.net is good only if.you're testing pings against a particular location under non-load conditions, otherwise it just chooses the closest server and will always have a good result, unless you have worse issues somewhere else.

In any case, your ISP can't be blamed for giving you those speeds if it truly says "up to # Mbps", as much as I'd like to say otherwise. You reach 16; that's still under the "up to 50" statement, and they will face you this motivation if you call them and they find nothing, after checking your network's conditions of course (they can't refuse checking if you ask).
However, if you're getting less than the minimum guaranteed bandwidth, provided your contract states it, you have all the rights to complain, so be sure to check that out.

Other than that, what titillating said about required bandwidth is true. A good minimum value (with some headroom for good measure) for smooth internet play, provided you're connecting to a dedicated server and that there's no load on your home network, would be D 5/U 0.5 Mbps.

As per the issue you're experiencing, a little explanation of my opinion on it. Skip this and the next paragraph if you want the short answer and don't care about all this 😛
The issue for you comes when your download bandwidth is saturated by youtube's traffic. Every time you move in an online game, you're communicating your new position to the server; that usually gets sent relatively fast, as your upload bandwidth is almost constantly free.
At the same time however, you have to download the position of everyone in your same location/lobby/playing zone/map/whatever at regular intervals, which includes your position as well.

Let's call each of these intervals a snapshot. Snapshots' data ALWAYS have priority over the last sent data, to ensure everyone out there in the world is working exactly with the same set of information.
If a snapshot says you're at point A, but your current location is B, you get teleported back to A and start moving afterwards, while your current point B gets ignored and trashed.

To avoid this, you have 3 options:
1 - exclude anyone but you from accessing the internet. Easiest, fastest, but obviously rude and mostly too drastic and unwanted, like you mentioned already...
2 - get a higher bandwidth in proportion of the number of devices used contemporarily. Those 16 are ok already for 3-4 devices streaming at full speed maybe. I used to have 6, and I struggled with 2 computers, got 20 now and I only start struggling at 5 or more devices.
3 - limit the bandwidth of all devices but yours to a certain value by router settings. Not all of them allow to do so, but if you find the right settings, this would be a more than viable option.
If your router allows device registration/labeling and has per-device configuration, it may allow you to do so.

 

[mlga91]

Definitely just sounds like regular latency related lag. Used to happen to me while playing WoW with family members streaming videos; was extremely frustrating, and I always looked like the bad guy when I complained. What kind of up/down speeds does your ISP currently provide? Could be that your network just can't handle that much traffic.

I'm glad to hear that it didn't only happen to me. I have the same exact situation here at home, and I don't want to tell everyone to stop watching just because I'm playing a game. Besides, the internet plan we have should be enough for streaming without this sort of thing happening. We have the Ultimate internet plan from Time Warner Cable here that "claims" to have download speeds of "up to 50 Mbps" and upload speeds of "up to 5 Mbps". Here are the actual speeds from speedtest.net:

It's SO much less than what they say they provide. This is probably a problem, right? We've been TWC customers for a long time now, and I gave them a call around 7 months ago regarding upgrading our plan (we had the standard plan, 15 down 1 up) and I found out we were paying THE SAME EXACT amount for the ultimate plan! $65... I was upset and asked them if they were able to upgrade our internet speeds to the ultimate plan and we ended up not paying anything except for the new modem for it. Apparently the "old" plan-rates still held, even if we didn't know we can upgrade without paying ANYTHING.

Anyways, sorry for the rather dull story. So is there nothing I can do about this other than see if TWC can fix these speeds? Friends of mine have even lower plans than I do and they don't experience this sort of lag, I think. Could it have anything to do with the router we have? Just asking some questions. Thanks.

Whoag, that speed must be enough what you're using it, someone must be stealing your connection, which router are you using?

 

[James Mason]

Whoag, that speed must be enough what you're using it, someone must be stealing your connection, which router are you using?

That's actually a good point, if he has an un protected wireless network someone could be stealing it.

 

[Vynavill]

And maintain that ping and those speeds? With his family still browsing youtube and watching videos?

Must be one hell of a gentleman for a "wi-fi thief"...
It's worth checking anyway.