Best gaming wifi router

Bust

Honorable
Mar 26, 2012
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I'm looking to get a high end router for gaming, streaming, 10+ devices. PC's will be hardwired and I'll be getting 250mb cable internet. I play a lot of internet heavy games, Overwatch, pubg, cod. I've been looking at the Netgear nighthawk x10, asus rt88, tp link talon or something else that is reliable and fast. Let me know.

Thanks!
 
Solution
It is not likely you will have any issues purely because you have such a large internet connection. Games use very little bandwidth. It would be other machines maybe causing a issue. Normal stuff like even 4k video watching is nothing. Most times it would be download traffic but that does not happen a lot and most times it does not actually use 100% of your bandwidth.

The big one is bit torrent. You need to make sure nobody is running that since it can destroy any internet connection.

I would avoid QoS to solve this issue. You are much better off getting a agreement from other people in the house to not abuse the connection...with stuff like torrents. You are much more likely to exceed the upload bandwidth before...
No Wifi is good for online games, it does not matter if you are playing mmoprg or shooter.
The latency on Wifi is simply bad, no matter what your Wifi router is.
Cable is the only optimal solution for online gaming.
I hope you are playing those online games only via those PCs connected with LAN cables to the router and you need the WLAN only for phones, tablets, etc.
 


Fair point about using WiFi but if you read first line of the OP's post it clearly says:

"PC's will be hardwired"
 
It is not likely you will have any issues purely because you have such a large internet connection. Games use very little bandwidth. It would be other machines maybe causing a issue. Normal stuff like even 4k video watching is nothing. Most times it would be download traffic but that does not happen a lot and most times it does not actually use 100% of your bandwidth.

The big one is bit torrent. You need to make sure nobody is running that since it can destroy any internet connection.

I would avoid QoS to solve this issue. You are much better off getting a agreement from other people in the house to not abuse the connection...with stuff like torrents. You are much more likely to exceed the upload bandwidth before your exceed your download. Again it is torrent and maybe video streaming if you have a small upload rate.

The reason you do not want to use QoS to solve this is most modern routers use a hardware assist to get the high speed. If you run QoS all your traffic must again pass through the CPU which drops the throughput...many router can barely handle 250mbps without hardware acceleration. The QoS puts even more burden oin the CPU so it drops your top speed even more.

If you really want to do traffic filtering/limiting on a high speed internet connection you likely are going to have to use a actual dual nic pc running a route/firewall like pfsense
 
Solution
The main differences are in the wireless abilities and sometimes software features. Most routers with gigabit wan/lan ports can keep up with a 250mbps internet. Most can actually support even gigabit internet when the hardware assist is active.

Only you can say if they have value. Even mid priced routers will likely support wired connections at your full internet speed.
 

Bust

Honorable
Mar 26, 2012
54
0
10,640
I think I'll try the Netgear nighthawk x6s to start, if it doesn't meet my needs I'll upgrade to the x10. Granted majority of the gaming will be done hardwired, we do a lot on WiFi and last thing I need to hear is the wifi sucks from the wife...
 
I didn't think the 802.11ad was finalized and we learn when they had pre 802.11n routers why you do not buy stuff before the standard is set.

Be careful about chasing big numbers. You end device is 1/2 the connection. Does little good to have a router that uses 4 antenna when your end device only has 2. Even the lower end router has things your end devices likely do not support running 3x200 is a non standard extension of 802.11n so many devices refuse to put support in for things that are not part of the actual standard.