Internet Lag Question?


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question, currently i have a 7meg cable internet and when i am playing xbox live and my wife tries to watch youtube or whatever it causes my game to lag. i now have another provider who i can go with and the speeds are either 25 or 50. i am happy with the 25 upgrade seeing its more then 3x what i have now. but if i go with either of those connections would this stop the lag while gaming? what can i do so she can stream while i play and not have lag.

Thanks

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More bandwidth might remove the issue your seeing, it might not - all depends, streaming video can fill up even your 25 or 50mbps pipe. It would fill it up for less time to download said file. So even if fills up the pipe you might not notice it as much because the window where pipe is full might be shorter.

You would remove the issue by use of QoS or bandwidth limiting where application that is sucking up the full pipe would be limited to use less than the full pipe both up and down. UP is where quite often the problem is most seen since if upload pipe is full you can not send requests or new page or even do dns, etc.

QoS creates kind of a line where the packets get in line for their turns, and you can setup time sensitive applications like games to be able to cut in line ;)

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Here is the thing, you always are sending up! You have to ACK, this is how tcp/ip works - packets sent to you, you ack that you got them - if sender doesn't get acks it resends, etc.

So if you have very small upload pipe compared to your download pipe -- it is possible to fill up this pipe with just your acks as you download, be it downloading a file via http, ftp, streaming, a website, etc.

If your upload pipe is full sending acks to your streaming video, the requests for say dns for that next website you want to go to have to wait in line on the upload queue to be sent.. This can present itself as lag.

You can do the math on what your max download would be compared to your upload pipe just being full of acks.. There are many variables to take into account that can cause "lag" Just because provider tells you get 25 or 50Mbps down -- you have to take into account what the upstream is as well, because depending on what your doing if you fill up that upstream your connection is going to be less responsive even if your not anywhere near your actual download limit.

Many users have issues with p2p because of this, they don't limit their upload and can not figure out why everything is now slow even when their p2p connection is not anywhere near their download limit.

QoS and or bandwidth limiting can help in your problem by making sure there is enough bandwidth for your other connections to do what they need to do or let the time sensitive stuff cut in line in the queues. For example something in your game saying move or fire, if has to wait in line for that to be sent up because your upstream is full of acks because your wife is streaming, you see that is lag in between the time you push the button in your game to when it actually happens.

You could have 100mbit down, doesn't mean that you can not still see lag - depending how the different protocols your using act. If your router supports QoS I would look to see what ports your game uses and set those to higher priority than whatever other stuff your doing.

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are you running the native firmware on that router, or 3rd party? Tomato, dd-wrt, openwrt, etc. You will prob find that some 3rd party firmware has better qos support than native.

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are you running the native firmware on that router, or 3rd party? Tomato, dd-wrt, openwrt, etc. You will prob find that some 3rd party firmware has better qos support than native.

True, but you'd think of it being a Cisco based router that it would have good QoS anyways. :p

Should also take note about YouTubde videos and what size the video is, if it's 360p, 480p, 720p or even 1080p. I can imagine the last 2 being enough to bottleneck the connection. YouTube doesn't actually download the whole video at once either, I believe it just caches a certain amount before carrying on.

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It may well be that native firmware will do what he needs it to do, I just have not been overly impressed with any native firmware when it comes to feature set in general.

My question is more just wanting to have information to work with if asked on how to set it up, if I know what they are working with I can give the appropriate help. If I don't know what firmware he is running and I point them to linksys instructions and he is running tomato not going to be of much use ;)

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Ok, i just logged into my router. it has Firmware version v1.0.04. i run NOD32 for virus software and malwarebytes for malware. i know you don't need this info but trying to provide you with everything. after logging into my router i found this tab under Administrator. i have nothing hard wired into are router at home. everything is wireless... 2 iPads, 2 laptops, 2 iPhones, 2 Xbox 360, 1 Wii, 1 WDTV Live Hub, 3 Directv Receivers, 1 Canon Printer... maybe after you seeing this you could help me out. also i have scheduled the install of the new cable internet company RCN which is giving me 50Mb/5Mb service. they said they are installing a Docsis Cable Modem and this should work with no issues with my Linksys E4200 correct?

Thanks

please help.

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this is everything on network

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"i have nothing hard wired into r network at home."

Well you can try setting up the QoS but if everything is wireless - and depending on how they implement it. WMM is a subset of 802.11e and does allow for fine control over the classes. But not sure how they have implemented it, doesn't seem like they have any way to to tweak the WMM settings?

Your connectivity before it even hits your upload is shared since your wireless. Wireless is not good for lag in the first place, its Shared!! Only 1 device can be talking at anyone time - if you have 1 device talking at say G, it lowers the overall speed of the network for starters.

What you could do since it looks like that router is dual band, is run your connection on say 5Ghz and all the other devices on 2.4 -- this would give you the complete wireless bandwidth on 5ghz vs sharing it with other devices.

I would put the device your playing your game on wired if I were you, and then let all the other wireless devices fight over that limited shared bandwidth.

Any yeah that router will work just fine with your new cable modem.

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The xboxes are to far away to do wired or I would have them setup wired. So even with the new 50Mb/5Mb I will have lag if I am playing while she tries to view YouTube? I think now mine is 7Mb/1Mb maybe the upload might be less.

Thanks!

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So your playing this game via the xbox? Does it support 5ghz? What is too far to run a wire? Limit is 100Meters, that is 1 freaking Large House you have ;)

You could use powerline adapters which would be better than wireless, etc.

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yeah that is going to suck no matter how you do it.. 18 clients - are they on at the same time? Wireless is SHARED bandwidth. How are you doing your directv? What wireless are you adding to them? Are you using a wireless bridge and have them plugged into a wire?

WDTV is streaming video over wireless? If doing that everything else is going to LAG for sure! Curious to see your wireless bandwidth being used while your trying to play a game.. If those devices are mostly OFF, then not that big of a deal.. But you can not expect to share bandwidth on 1 AP with that many devices and not see a bit of lag ;)

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So your playing this game via the xbox? Does it support 5ghz? What is too far to run a wire? Limit is 100Meters, that is 1 freaking Large House you have ;)

You could use powerline adapters which would be better than wireless, etc.

I think both old xbox 360 adapters and the built in ones in the new 360 is Wifi n 2.4Ghz only bud.

I have an older Linksys router (Wag120N) and I find enabling Qos & WMM Support resolved lagging issues when GF is on xbox watching LoveFilm and im bf3ing.

I added a rule for desktops mac address to be given priority.

Tempted to try powerliners, both desktop and xbox is wireless just now and i miss 1gbit access to the Nas via desktop ethernet. Any recced ones spring to mind Budman :)

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I only play madden online. I tried fishing wires to hook the xboxes up wired but couldn't get through some walls. How do I configure the router to us certain things on 5ghz vs the other.

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Those items that r in the list aren't all being used at the same time. Normally if I'm online my wife may watch a video here and there and that's it. The WDTV Live hub is only online for firmware updates. I store everything on the internal hard drive. Nothing is every streamed from it. I don't play the wii online just have games for my daughter to play. When I say directv is online when they install it, they put all the receivers on the network in case u want the whole home feature, which I don't have. So there isn't that much going on at once.

I appreciate all the fees back and thoughts

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