Network priority and gaming lag

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
H

hertzuk

Distinguished
Aug 21, 2007
52
0
18,630
Having just moved in with my girlfriend I've realised that her love of Netflix and my love of online gaming somewhat clash and I would like to seek an amicable solution.


We have 50Mbps Virgin Internet, so it's plenty of bandwidth for streaming and gaming at the same time, but it seems to prioritise Netflix over Xbox (definitely the wrong way round imo!) and the result is I lag terribly whenever she's in the house.

It's made especially bad when she's streaming to her iPad over wifi rather than to the laptop that's wired.

So my queries are:


1) Why, when there is plenty of bandwidth to go around, does my router insist on destroying my connection in favour of hers?

2) How can we fix it? I've heard of QoS, unfortunately our router (the Virgin super hub) doesn't support it as far as I can see. Is the only solution to buy a better router? And if so, any recommendations?


Cheers!

Chris
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Dunlop0078

Dunlop0078

Titan
Ambassador
Feb 13, 2014
13,306
146
70,990
My router has something called media prioritization, which is a form of QoS i suppose. I select my computer or put in the ip address to my computer into the media prioritization list and it will always have priority over everything else on my network. Here is a description of it below. Your router would have to have this function to use it so yes you might need a new one if yours doesn't have a form of this functionality. What would your budget for a new router be?

http://www.linksys.com/fi/support-article?articleNum=138353
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
H

hertzuk

Distinguished
Aug 21, 2007
52
0
18,630



Ahh, that would be adequate.

I must admit, I have never really looked to buy a router, and didn't realise how astronomically expensive they can be! I was hoping for something around say £50! But would probably spend up to 100 perhaps.

The xbox (and my PC) are connected in another room via a 500Mbps powerline network, so I don't need anything unbelievable. The powerline adapter also works as a wifi extender so I don't need anything with the best wireless transmitter in the world either.

In essence, I am perfectly satisfied with the Virgin Media Super Hub and could make do with it, aside from the lack of QoS support.

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,354
2,763
125,640
Your largest issue with controlling the data is you only have the ability to decide what is important on data you send. You can decide say some game is more important than netflix. The problem is seldom is it the upload overloaded....someone seeding torrents is the exception. Most times you are exceeding your download bandwidth.

On the receiving side your router pretty much has little choice to take what it gets from the ISP. By the time it can do anything the damage is already done. Your router can not recreate data the ISP has discarded and discard something else. Really the ISP must run the QoS to favor whatever traffic you decide and of course they will not do this except on very large enterprise accounts.

There are some tricky configuration you can use in the QoS but they are fairly advanced and are not really a beginner network thing. They all involve setting a artificial limit hoping to trick the end device that you want to limit into requesting less data. Although a couple of better asus routers have some ability you are best off using third party firmware like dd-wrt. Still there is a massive learning curve
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
H

hertzuk

Distinguished
Aug 21, 2007
52
0
18,630



I see, that does make sense. I did wonder how the QoS could possibly be controlling the incoming allocation and as you say Netflix isn't heavy on the upload.

Ahh I'll have a look into it, maybe this is a lost cause to a certain extent? If she was watching Netflix on a laptop then I've heard of programs that can reduce the download speed your system will use (I guess similar to the advanced QoS you were talking about), so they literally ask for less data (?). But unfortunately it's through the freeview box or her iPad, so I'm doomed?

One thing I don't really understand is that if I do a speedtest when she's not on Netflix, then we get around 40mb or so down. Then when she's using Netflix it reduces to like 4. Surely Netflix can't be using 3+ MBps? You could torrent and download the whole bloody series in the time it takes to watch 1 episode at that speed!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
B

bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,354
2,763
125,640
Some HD stuff on netflix can use 6m or more but it will not come anywhere close to 40m. Of course you want to run your testing on a wired connection because if the netflix is on wireless you are competing for the wireless and it does not share real well.

You may have a problem with your connection. Try to download a free game on another pc from something like steam where you can set the maximum rate it will download. See what you speed test says as you change the download rates.

You should have no issues having 1 person watching netflix on a 40m connection there should be plenty of bandwidth left over.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
H

hertzuk

Distinguished
Aug 21, 2007
52
0
18,630


I agree. I ran a test like you said and the results were fine (so I set a DL limit of 600 KBps on my downloader and the speedtest dropped by around 6-7 Mbps). Also, everything is wired.

Then my girlfriend started watching Netflix and the bandwidth dropped by say 6 Mbps or so again, from 40, so I wasn't lagging and it was fine.

However, later in the evening after she'd been netflixing for a while it went down to like 4 Mbps again, even when she'd stopped streaming.

Obviously 4Mbps download with her streaming will cause me to lag.

It's as if we're being throttled by Virgin Media, despite being on a plan that has no download throttling.

She's away over the weekend so going to check it out and then get in touch with VM next week.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom