Common Cause of Warpy Game Play

[Chilli]

This is not a complaint of any sorts on HTC's service.  It is in fact, a confirmation of what we should all know by now the connection woes come with many variables, a lot of them out of HTC's realm even though they try their best to give us advice on curing such problems.

1.  I have awesome, smooth game play almost anytime.

2.  When there is an issue, it can almost always be found somewhere on my end or that of another player having connection issues.

3.  Most relavent area of discussion I intended for this post:  My bandwidth is being eaten alive by the horde of internet hungry devices and applications suckling their way onto my home network.

This is me before checking into the game:  Opens cellphone and shuts off wifi connection, listens to each door and checks in the office to see who is awake and possibly whipping cyber data bits through known connected computers and laptops,   quietly taps on any door and asks are you watching TV (which is no longer TV, but streaming content)...... all seems quiet.... and I attempt to settle in for a few minutes hopefully an hour or more of enjoyment of AH3.

That is when the gremlins appear and I notice flashing lights in the distance somewhere, indicating some device (possibly a toaster) downloading a useless update to sell me margarine.  How much of this activity is actually going on, I don't have a clue but I was amazed when I took a look at the number of devices that are attached (suckling) to my home network. 

It is like if I were to open my router and take a close look inside:



"..... Wait!.... The Tablet.... The Tablet!"  .... and oh yeah, might have to do with the adult entertainment section in the back... 

Okay, the actual question:  Is it easily feasible to split a single household connection that would limit interference from usage in other areas.  Basically, I am just asking for a connection that is stable and not alternating from lightning fast to snail's pace crawl (sorry Lusche) randomly?

[FESS67]

Hmmm,

Probably not.....I mean sure it is possible, but is it feasible?

QoS settings in your router to favour the game above other content might be a possibility but again how easy and workable is that for all members of the household.

My son plays on his play station, my wife is always looking at real estate images, music is streaming from Spotify or Pandora and I get very very few laggy fights and as you said, that is almost always going to be caused by something between us players and the server rather than something in HTCs control.

If it was ever an issue where I knew it was definitely coming from other users in my house I would make them pay for another connection

[Vulcan]

Wifi is a contended medium, that is to say all devices using it contend for their share.

Wifi uses radio frequencies used by other devices outside of computing (e.g. cordless phones).

Wifi contends with noise from other devices (e.g. microwave ovens).

You can make wifi better by using systems like Fairnet or WMM to share it more evenly, but that won't account with other devices or noise.

You should avoid using wifi for gaming. Wired is always better. People who say Wifi is just as fast/good as wired should be hung, drawn, and quartered.

If you are on wired it is fairly easy to do bandwidth management and prioritisation on a half decent router/or firewall.

(an example   how to do bandwidth management: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUbLf9qJU98  entry level device: https://www.amazon.com/DELL-SonicWALL-SOHO-Firewall-Appliance/dp/B00WT50ZUY/ )  : disclosure note I sell these but not in Amerika

[715]

I haven't looked into it yet but I'm pretty sure my router allows you to set QoS bandwidth limits by individual device attached (I assume by WiFi or hardwire).  It might help to look into your router settings and maybe download and read the manual?

[Dobs]

I solved this by the following:
ME>HARD WIRED INTO THE ROUTER
REST>sucking up the wireless spectrum

You can also limit/prioritize based on what your modem capability is....

Just saying...  rest of the house has no idea I have them throttled (but I have 200meg down and a Nighthawk router...and no one seems to have complained yet).

Dobs

[Bizman]

^^^^ this.

Plus, unplugging less important devices from WiFi might help. I'm not saying which ones, since I don't know how important the Internet features of, say, your toaster, are.

[Rich46yo]

I solved this by the following:
ME>HARD WIRED INTO THE ROUTER
REST>sucking up the wireless spectrum

Yepp, Unless someone else wants to pay the cable bill. 

[38ruk]

First thing i do at night is pull the plug on the wifi router.... Way too many devices hit the router at my place, rather pull the plug or disable the radio. Just beware of wife and kid ack hehe

[Chilli]

Vulcan,

Your hardware option is the closest that I have heard to what I wish to do.  I have tried some fiddling with QOS before using software and router.  The example given in the video (did not view the entire thing 30 mins) that I found exactly related was the BW(something) that not only throttled a connection, but also set it's accuracy in terms of % reliability (wrong term, I know). 

My feeling is that if I can find an area where I am running "slow" but steady, the other connections buzzing about on the router would have less of a ping effect.  I could be entirely wrong, but that is my aim.

Thanks for all comments..... yes, I do turn into the bandwidth dictator on occasions like squad night or special events.     The rest of the time I am aiming at just getting along. 

[Gman]

Depending on what version of Win you're using, check you power settings.  If you have power set to anything other than max/performance/gaming/whatever it's called now/etc, you could have problems.  I had mine somehow get set to some power saving mode in Win 8 and I had huge lag issues, my net graph showed them clear as day, and it took a while to figure out what the issue was, but it was completely the power setting on its own causing HUGE delays and warps.

[Vulcan]

Your hardware option is the closest that I have heard to what I wish to do.  I have tried some fiddling with QOS before using software and router.

I hate the use of QoS. QoS is often just tagging and does ZERO for managing bandwidth. Othertimes it is just queue priorities which become useless in saturated environments. A lot of home routers (and even small business gear) only do egrees traffic management (your packets going out, not packets coming from the HTC servers) where what is really needed is both egrees and ingress.

Pro tip for all: you can buy a lot of used enterprise gear on places like ebay cheaper than brand new consumer gear - that equipment will often outperform the latest consumer gear by a long way. Don't be fooled, in some tech you get exactly what you pay for - wifi is a good example - the good wifi chipsets cost a lot of money - there is no avoiding it.

As an example I have a Ruckus Wifi AP (7962, A/B/G/N model). It covers our house really well (2 story, 265 sq m/ 316 sq yards) and overall property (800 sq m / 956 sq yards). That is one AP. It also maintains relatively good transfer rates (lowest I've seen using speedtest.net is 25Mbps at the fringes).

Same goes for the firewalls, I see cheap Sonicwalls on ebay (just use the old models in SPI only mode, don't worry about the licenses features unless you're a firewall freak like me).

[Skuzzy]

The best-bang-for-the-buck consumer router, I have found is the MicroTik RB2011 routerboard.

It is not the easiest router to setup, but it is rich with features and seems to work really well.

I am with Vulcan.  I hate QoS.  It is a poor bandaid for solving congestion issues.

[Krusty]

you should be able to set up quotas for individual devices on the network, no? I think even mid-range consumer devices allow that. I know mine has some options to that effect. Just set a healthy quota for the other devices and set aside your device to get its own quota. AH doesn't require all that much.

Shouldn't that get the desired result without resorting to QoS?

[BoilerDown]

Pro tip for all: you can buy a lot of used enterprise gear on places like ebay cheaper than brand new consumer gear - that equipment will often outperform the latest consumer gear by a long way.

Yup http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/ios-firewall/index.html

Just check ebay for the hardware and know someone who can get you the right IOS release (a friend in IT with a support contract).  You also need to have some networking knowledge, if subnetting scares you, don't do this.

[Vulcan]

you should be able to set up quotas for individual devices on the network, no? I think even mid-range consumer devices allow that. I know mine has some options to that effect. Just set a healthy quota for the other devices and set aside your device to get its own quota. AH doesn't require all that much.

Shouldn't that get the desired result without resorting to QoS?

Nope nope nope nope - quotas are more stupid than QoS. Quotas don't address immediate bandwidth sharing or shaping requirements. Basically they don't stop something from hammering the network.