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| Member |
We have a teenager in the house and he Facetimes and games online at the same time. We have Spectrum internet and can get download speeds of 200 MBS. Upload are usually 5-10. We only have issues when he is here and gaming. I have a Asus RT-AC3100 Router. I am far from a techie. Is there a good way to prioritize devices? Would creating a guest network for him be best to prevent him from sucking up our bandwidth? Should this even be a problem with download speeds like that? I couldn't even load a webpage on my phone and the wired internet connection was barely working for streaming TV but he was gaming. Hopefully someone can help so we can let him enjoy his gaming but not prevent us from getting done what we need to. | ||
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eh-TEE-oh-clez |
First, 200mbps is should be plenty. Most games do not actually take much bandwidth while playing. A streaming movie typically takes more bandwidth than gameplay does. There's a caveat here though: if he hasn't played a particular game in a while, or if he's starting a new game, most games go through a really aggressive period of downloading updates, maps, and content when you start it. This is likely the culprit, not the gameplay itself. Second, confirm that you are actually getting 200mbps. Use Speedtest.net to test speeds. Remember, bandwidth by your ISP is provided as a theoretical maximum. A WiFi connection will be far less efficient, as distance from your router, walls, and other devices competing for signal space will affect your connection. Third--and this happens to my wife all the time--she blames our internet for slowdowns that actually occur on the "serving" side of the internet. The internet pipe into your house might be fine, so to speak, but the servers that are trying to deliver you content may not be delivering it fast enough. Everyone is at home with COVID, everyone's watching the same shows, and the servers can only serve up the content to so many people at once. Lastly, your ASUS router is very feature rich. The setting you are looking for is "QoS" which means Quality of Service. ASUS has "Adaptive QoS" which allows you to select the mode ("streaming", "web browsing") which is most important to you and prioritizes that traffic for you. There should also be a bandwidth limiter option here, that lets you limit any particular device from maxing out your bandwidth. The recommendation here is to be as *least* restrictive as possible while getting the desired result. Just prioritize web browsing first, see if that helps. Then prioritize streaming next. If that doesn't work, use the customize feature to make a cascading list of priorty (ie, streaming first, then media, then games). Use the bandwidth limiter as a last resort. | |||
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| Member |
I have been confirming our internet speeds with speed test. When it's been working, it's been working great. Thank you! I just did that and hope that helps by prioritizing uses. I want him to be able to game but feel our internet usage should be prioritized since, well, were the adults and paying for the internet.  Is their a way to prioritize individual devices all the time? I see in the Adaptive QoS that you can drag and drop priority levels but I think it's only temporary. Is that correct? I would be interested in always giving my laptop priority over all other devices, along with our living room Roku TV. Thanks again! | |||
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Member |
1. Facetime 2. Video Games 3. There is a third... If he's a teenager that is. 10 years to retirement! Just waiting! | |||
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| Savor the limelight |
As a point of reference, I have three kids that game, use Discord, and FaceTime. Our internet speeds are 225mbps down/11mbps up. School was cancelled yesterday, so all three were home. The oldest still had classes using Zoom, while the other two gamed and used FaceTime. My wife and I had no issues streaming at the same time. All of our connections are wireless. Like Aeteocles said, downloading games is a different than just playing them. A lot of games are more than 30GB which takes 30 minutes to download at 200mbs. This is a one time thing per game though. If you are experiencing consistant slow downs over a period of time, you should look at what else your teenager is doing. Is he downloading 4k movies and TV shows for example? Your ASUS may have the ability to track bandwidth by user. | |||
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| As Extraordinary as Everyone Else  |
Very interesting and timely topic as we are dealing with this as well. I found the comments by Aeteocles particularly informative... On a slight thread drift our router is about 6 years old and I was thinking about upgrading it...Does this make sense? I am looking at something like this to allow for kids gaming as well as our own use.. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c...hbxsqgfbb01vop902fa9 ------------------ Eddie Our Founding Fathers were men who understood that the right thing is not necessarily the written thing. -kkina | |||
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| Member |
My ASUS AC2900 has a game accelerator, adaptive QoS (mentioned above) to allow prioritizing packets, and the capability to track bandwidth usage by device. | |||
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| Member |
Change the password to the router. He might of already corrected any problems in his favor. ____________________________________________________ The butcher with the sharpest knife has the warmest heart. | |||
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Alea iacta est |
While ASUS has a great QoS application, and most if the time privacy policies are ignored and accepted, the CNET reviewer has a lot to say about ASUS and using Trend Micro as their third party developer for this. If you plan on using the QoS, please at least read this before you go any further: https://www.cnet.com/reviews/asus-zenwifi-ax-review/
The “lol” thread | |||
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| eh-TEE-oh-clez |
That's a very powerful router, but may be overkill. What's the goal? Stronger signals/longer reach? Greater band width? More simultaneously connected devices? Most people can get by with something far less powerful--the typical consumer does not yet have gigabit internet, nor do they run data locally from device to device with any regularity (for example, the typical consumer does not stand up their own server or use data from their NAS constantly), or have so many devices that they would benefit from three radio bands. But, if you've got the money, go for it. I've been happy with ASUS hardware for years. | |||
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| eh-TEE-oh-clez |
There likely is, but it's not the preferred way of doing things anymore. Which device gets the bandwidth is less important than what the device is doing with the bandwidth. For example, it would be fairly shitty for everyone's video calls and streaming shows to come to a halt because your laptop wants to do a widows update or Microsoft OneDrive is syncing files. And, yes, while you are the adult and you pay for the internet, I think your goal is to maximize satisfaction for everyone. It probably doesn't feel good if your son complains about the internet while he's trying to play games either. Slot activities with the most noticeable impact higher (video streaming, work conference calls) and things that that didn't really matter (general web browsing, bulk downloading) lower. It's okay to let his game play slot higher in priority than other basic web traffic--it probably matters more to him than getting the weather quickly matters to you. | |||
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quarter MOA visionary |
Is everyone using WiFi? Especially the gamer? WIFI is not fully duplex communication like Ethernet (wired) connection. I hate just guessing at a solution without all the factors but with the limited information these may help your performance: 1. Hard wire the gamer 2. QoS might work but it will affect the gamers performance and they need/want all the advantage they can get. 3. Check your WiFi protocols/configuration WiFI Six, using the 5ghz band with wide channels, AC protocols, check area contention, etc 4. additionally the client adaptor must support the faster protocols ~ the connection is only as good as it's weakest link (AP or client adaptor). It has nothing to do with the brand Asus. Focus on the fundamentals not the brand/model. My instinct with the limited knowledge is to focus on the gamers Wi-Fi connection. | |||
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| eh-TEE-oh-clez |
Another thought: it's also really unusual for internet traffic to slow down to a halt like the OP is describing, especially with so much bandwidth. Internet traffic usually doesn't come in as an uninterrupted stream of packets perfectly sized to fill up the entire bandwidth pipe. Web browsing traffic usually finds a way to slot itself in, and streaming traffic can buffer in bursts the same way. I would also try restarting the router (and modem for good measure). On startup, the router will search for a new radio channel (hypothetically a less congested one) and perhaps that will help as well. It might very well be that there is enough WiFi cross traffic on your current channel that it is interfering with your internet. | |||
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Don't Panic |
Another possibility that might cause slowdowns only when your teenager is on and gaming. Some games can be set up for a home computer to host game play for a group to play on. If your teen is 'hosting a private server' then your network could be seeing a lot of traffic generated by that server activity. Not all games do this, and not everyone who plays games that do allow this functionality actually set up and run servers for their friends to play on. But it's a possibility. | |||
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Go Vols! |
Sounds like your router has settings favoring his needs. If you are just browsing, you may have to completely disable prioritization all together. Usually they are more geared toward gaming, streaming, etc. | |||
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| quarter MOA visionary |
While I agree that channel contention can contribute to issues ~ I disagree on just randomly trying shit. A solid plan would be to first measure what is actually happening in then propose a solution attempt. This can be accomplished easily by a plethora of Wi-Fi software apps/products. If there is a lot of contention then manually adjust the channel. YMMV | |||
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Nullus Anxietas |
Agreed. It has been my personal observation that most "Internet speed" problems are actually local WiFi performance problems. This is because most home WiFi solutions are poor implementations. Poor equipment, poor siting, or both. Example (please bear with me): We have an OTA TV DVR. It can simultaneously play back as many streams as its hardware and our network can handle. All but one of the playback streaming devices are connected via WiFi. The "common wisdom" on the forums discussing these devices is that shouldn't work well. Yet, for a test, I once had five (5) client devices playing different 1080P content simultaneously without a single pause or glitch. I could still flawlessly browse the web with another WiFi-connected device and my wife was playing a networked game on her tablet. IIRC, the AP was up to about 90% CPU utilization, and, while I was running that test, I had my computer running a ping test against a 5GHz WiFi bridge and it didn't drop a single packet. The thing is: I have a proper WiFi access point, properly sited, connected to a properly-designed wired network backbone. Btw: Up until recently we had only a 50mb/s Internet connection and, even with running an Internet server on our end of it, we were never starved for bandwidth. We were recently bumped to a whopping 75mb/s. "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe "If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher | |||
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| Help! Help! I'm being repressed!  |
I'd also block torrenting ports in the router while you're at it. | |||
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| Do the next right thing  |
It's not the gaming, it's the large downloads in the background. | |||
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| quarter MOA visionary |
True, the actual playing of the games does not consume inordinate amounts of bandwidth. Downloads will affect this more, much more. Additionally, like I said before WiFi is not a duplex method, data is traveling one way at a time unlike LAN Ethernet where it is bi-directional. Also if the WiFi connection is not the fastest protocols then it takes longer and hence .... https://www.prrcomputers.com/b...o-online-games-take/ https://www.highspeedinternet....ed-for-online-gaming https://www.glimp.co.nz/what-a...e-the-most-bandwidth | |||
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