Help me solve this mystery...

[avillabon]

Hello and thanks for taking the time to read my thread, hope i dont extend too much.

First things first, here are a few important pieces of information about my network:
Router: On Networks n150
Internet info: Att Uverse 18mbps
Connected devices: 4 iphones, 4 ipads, 2 desktops and 1 roku 3
ALL DEVICES CONNECTED WIRELESSLY

I'm experiencing heavy lag (which fluctuates in intensity and also comes and goes) when playing league of legends online. This happens about a 75% of the time and at all hours of the day.

I think the amount of devices might be overwhelming my router but then again i dont know enough about networking. I dont think my internet connection is the issue since i am getting good download speeds (most times) on websites, videos and itunes.

I'd like to know if there is a way to monitor the network to find out what could be the cause of the problem. Is this the way to troubleshoot this? I need some help and really have no idea where to begin.

thanks for your help and for getting this far

Alex

 

[Saga Lout]

Gaming over a wireless network is always going to be less satisfactory than a cabled connection, even if no other devices are sharing the bandwidth. Does it improve much if no other devices are using the Net?

 

[fyrye]

There are several diagnostics you can run on your network. For example the lag times while playing an online game can be caused by one of your hops experiencing heavy loads and even packet loss. Both of these can be intermittent depending on your hops, server loads, etc, and you would still appear to have great download speeds. I had a similar issue where I would begin experiencing packet loss randomly which was being caused by one of the hops my internet was taking. I used a proxy and the issue went away.
Prior to experiencing the heavy lag, run an initial test at pingtest.net. This will tell you how much jitter and packet loss you may be experiencing which would affect online gaming. Then do the same test when you are experiencing heavy lag and this will help to pinpoint internal/external issues.
Do keep in mind packet loss can be caused by corrupted drivers, misconfigured firewalls, and/or router.
If your ping changes from ~60ms to ~300ms there is a good chance your network maybe overloaded or a bottleneck is being caused as the roku or other device is streaming media. Be sure to run a tracert to ensure it is not a single hop being troublesome.
As for troubleshooting internally during heavy lag times, systematically disconnect/turn off the other devices and test the connection, if you notice a steady increase in performance the devices are utilizing too much bandwidth, if you disconnect/turn off one of the devices and get a sudden increase in performance that device is causing issues on your network. To which I have also experienced this issue, where updating the device's ethernet drivers resolved the issue.