Online gaming lags when someone is streaming videos.

[Swampieryan]

I've been having issues playing online shooters when someone is watching movies on the WiFi. I've cabled all possible connections to minimise poor WiFi connection and the issue persists. I feel like I'm going crazy. Every 5 to 10 seconds my game will lag, where in game, the ping monitor goes 15/20ms, down to 0ms, then up to 400ms (the max it shows in game) then back to 15/20ms. I do not get this when nobody is streaming.

[imjolly]

You need to get a third party router to be able to allocate bandwidth priority to devices as you cannot do that with hub

popular choice is tplink 9970 at about £40 and there is plenty help for setting up on the forum

[Swampieryan]

I've tried already and the cable wasn't recognised in the router. i.e. It was as if no cable was plugged in

[Keith_Beddoe]

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@Swampieryan wrote:
I've tried already and the cable wasn't recognised in the router. i.e. It was as if no cable was plugged in

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Then you had set it up incorrectly.

This is the correct setup VDSL (BT FTTC) Setup instructions

Or  FTTP  setup - Wireless router mode 

Or for normal broadband ADSL Setup instructions

It also needs very careful configuration, to implement priority controls to reduce the priority of the upload path, which is used by streaming media for normal TCP acknowledgements, and quality control. This is sent as regular blocks of data, which is when you see the ping spikes.

Unless you understand how to do this properly, it will not be effective.

[Swampieryan]

I have done this, set everything up correctly, followed all guides, with this exact router, and nothing. Same issues. 

[Keith_Beddoe]

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@Swampieryan wrote:

I have done this, set everything up correctly, followed all guides, with this exact router, and nothing. Same issues. 

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What did you set the upload and download priority for all other devices, and what speed?

The best option is to configure the IP address of your gaming console manually,  with the following settings.

IP address 192.168.1.50

Subnet mask 255.255.255.0

Default gateway 192.1681.1

DNS  servers 192.168.1.1

Set the priority to priority 1 and set the minimum upload speed to about 50% of the total available, and the max download speed to about 90% of the total available.

Then use the following settings for the DHCP range, which will cover all other devices.

IP range 192.168,1.100 to 192.168.1.199

Port range 1 to 65535

Priority 8

Maximum upload speed to about 10% of the total, download speed  to about 80% of the total.

That should ensure you get upload priority, and may improve your response.

[Swampieryan]

OK I did all of those steps, bar every other ip address have priority 8. I shall try again tomorrow as I have reverted to old setup

[Keith_Beddoe]

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@Swampieryan wrote:
OK I did all of those steps, bar every other ip address have priority 8. I shall try again tomorrow as I have reverted to old setup

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You can restrict the upload speed on other users by quite a large amount, and it will not be noticed unless they upload a lot of video, or send large email attachments. Even a maximum 500Kbs upload speed may not be noticed. That is something you can experiment with.

Streaming media is mostly download, but does use the upload path to control rate and quality, so I suspect that its these blocks of upload data which are affecting your ping results.

I do not get involved with gaming, however I would expect that its your control signals that are being delayed, so they reach the game server later than they would normally.

The advantage of manually setting the IP address on your gaming console, outside of the DHCP range, is that it saves having to reserve it in the DHCP table, because unless its the first one allocated by DHCP, ie 192.168.1.100, then its more effort to setup bandwidth controls for other users.

Bandwidth control settings accept a range of IP addresses, which makes things simpler.

You can always see the effect of bandwidth controls, by connecting a computer or mobile to the router, which has been allocated an IP address in the restricted range, then running a speed test from one of the many speed test websites. That will prove whether it working properly.

By carefully setting these restrictions, you should be able to reduce the effect other users have on your connection. There is nothing you can do to affect the ping response, once its left your router, as that is down to the Internet itself.

If the ping had been bad, with no other users connected, then I would have suspected that your connection had a high error rate, which would be causing re-transmissions.