[CadetMahoney]

My friend of 20 lives with his parents is not renewing his Live subscription which ends soon since he's having ppl stay over for a long time. His older Sister and her Husband are living under the same roof as him now for the forseeable future. My guess work or financial reasons.

He asked me what can be done since the connection has gone to total shit. So I asked him to check his router attached devices to get an idea of how much stress the connection is under and he sent me this:



Both have phones that connect wirelessly to the net. Plus no doubt Apps and Widgets that periodically check weather updates on those smartphones. His sister is at home whilst looking for work and uses her imac alot, so theres no escape really. Since he doesn't pay for the net anyway he has no leverage to say anything and probably doesn't have the gall to buy a separate connection or go through the hassle of doing so.

Now I know alot of you ppl will probably be smug and say "single player offline", "I rent my own house", "1st world problems?" etc. but I really feel sorry for this guy since he is big on friends and multiplayer and now doesn't really have any recourse but to go without.

As households get more attached to the net and make use of streaming alot of young ppl will have to vie for bandwidth. Subscriptions may suffer as ppl just think it's not worth it after going through trial periods and seeing it's basically unplayable due to their circumstances. If parents decide to start watching netflix at peak gaming times, young gamers will suffer have no choice but to go without since online will become basically unplayable. Not only that ISP's give the impression that a more costly package will get rid of this problem, often citing "gaming" in their marketing when even one househole watching utube will make it unplayable. So any of you have similar stories and what was done.

[Pandaman]

this is my router:


i dont have any problems at all going online. :\

so its possible your friend has some other sort of problem fixable on his end. [new router] a youtube video really shouldnt be very noticable in the grand scheme of things.

[Gaz Pwnage]

Buy a new router, use QoS, maybe bandwidth limit everybody else... other than that you cant make your actual internet go any faster.

[DSix]

Pandaman you might want to hide those mac addresses.

[Apostate]

In my experience, online play does not require an amazing bandwidth chunk to perform - at least that's what I've seen with Diablo 3 and BF3, where I can easily play MP mtches while my gf speaks on MSN (using camera) with her family back home while having a YT video loading etc.

I can even download a couple of torrents while playing online - but more than 2 and lagging starts.

[br0ken_shad0w]

Tomato-compatible router + QoS

[The_Monk]

Well, I've been getting some internet problems, I even switched internet providers but the strange thing is that I only get Disconnects on my PS3/360 when there's two pc's connected and one of them have someone playing facebook games. Ugh...

=/

[DeaconKnowledge]

Buy a dect 6.0 phone, and refrain from using your microwave.

Also, make sure you have a router that can handle all that bandwidth. Your old WRT54G with Tomato may need an upgrade.

[CadetMahoney]

Not sure if he can bandwidth limit. . . I'm not too knowledgeable on all that myself not having the problem so never really required looking into it.

I'll look into this stuff for him though. . . Quality of Service:

To guarantee a certain level of performance to a data flow. For example, a required bit rate, delay, jitter, packet dropping probability and/or bit error rate may be guaranteed. Quality of service guarantees are important if the network capacity is insufficient, especially for real-time applications such as online games, since these often require fixed bit rate and are delay sensitive, and in networks where the capacity is a limited resource, for example in cellular data communication.

So basically I have to tell him to buy a decent router with these options available aswell as maybe telling him to up his bandwidth for the best reasonable solution? Sounds like some progress.

[Solstice]

QoS for the win. Helps with connection lag from multiple devices

[Like the hat?]

Sounds like one of them is torrentng stuff

[Kusagari]

Unless someones torrenting, I don't know how that would completely ruin his connection.

[Metalmurphy]

You can disregard Apps and Widgets, they're not your problem.

What's your upload speed? Cause that's probably ur biggest problem, make sure any torrent clients have upload limits set to at least 50% of ur max upload speed.

[Alextended]

Eh, if they're not intensively using them to stream videos, download apps, or whatever else at the same time he tries to play, it shouldn't cause any real issues. If they're torrenting shit or something then he could kindly ask them to set the bandwidth limit on that program to something managable, if not a fair 50% of the average speed they achieve (not the theoretical max). Or do that on his own, if they don't have the know how to realise it. I did that with my older brother's laptop some years ago, set utorrent to half speed then unlocked it before he moved out. It's one thing to not ask to hog the connection to himself because he doesn't pay for it and another altogether to basically not get to use it properly at all. Looking for a job online shouldn't cause issues either, I often google between gaming and that barely affects anything on a crappy 2Mbit connection, I'm sure they have better wherever he is.

Also, lock the wi-fi, it could be neighbours or whatever that also leech off of it, I've set it so my modem asks for a password as well as a permission for that device's Mac Address to be added to the exceptions list, everything else is blocked.

[br0ken_shad0w]

Unless someones torrenting, I don't know how that would completely ruin his connection.

Uploading on Google Music can completely fuck your connection if you don't limit the upload speeds.

[Anteater]

I used to share a router with my brother, I didn't know how to use the QoS thing and he would be streaming videos or sending files or whatever he's doing and it would lag my net really bad.

[CadetMahoney]

I'll see about that. . . maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

I suspect alot of young ppl won't have much knowledge on these things anyway and take it as it comes, plus buying new hardware (router) may be a risk as there's no guarantee it will make things reasonable gaming wise.

[zigg]

Sounds like one of them is torrentng stuff

That was my first thought. Or streaming video.

[5amshift]

I'm an only child and my mom only uses the TV. So basically whenever she isn't on it, I can play online whenever without problems.

[mavs]

How old is his router? They do have a lifespan. I remember I had some cheapo brand that towards the end of its life would heat up to over 90C, and left a discoloration on the desk beneath it before I discovered and replaced it.

[stuminus3]

I thought this was going to be about having a wife and kids and all kinds of other duties that keep one from being able to schedule anything more than a quick online session with random people. And now I feel old.

[Gen X]

*stuff*

To the OP, if your friend has full access to the router, chuck a password on it and when he wants to game just block the other devices from logging on. Problem solved. =D

[Diablohead]

Where I live we used to be on a 20mb down 2 mb up however the crap router we were given could only upload at 1mb for some reason and it made us all suffer for a long time, before we knew this we upgraded to 50meg 5up and had a brand new router/modem hybrid given to us, never really had a problem since even if my dad watches iplayer and my bro is on youtube while my ipad streams twitch tv.

It might be a router problem, what does speedtest.net say?

[cramcakes]

I thought this was going to be about having a wife and kids and all kinds of other duties that keep one from being able to schedule anything more than a quick online session with random people. And now I feel old.

Haha. Me too :(

[Outtrigger888]

I have more devices connected to my 8 year old wireless router than your friend does and it works fine. My antennas are busted and the thing looks like hell but its still hanging in there. I know there will be a day I need to move on and purchase a new one, what are some routers you guys would recommend?

[AngryMoth]

Didn't realise this could be a problem. I live with 6 other heavy Internet users. Our connection is very average and about 50% of the time someone is using Netflix in the front room. Never had any trouble.

[bill0527]

I have more devices connected to my 8 year old wireless router than your friend does and it works fine. My antennas are busted and the thing looks like hell but its still hanging in there. I know there will be a day I need to move on and purchase a new one, what are some routers you guys would recommend?

I was going to ask the same question.

I'm looking into buying a new router. I'm currently using a Netgear Dual Band Wireless N WNDR3300 and I'm not pleased with the performance. The router sits 20 feet and 2 walls away from my Xbox 360 and if I try to stream stuff over Netflix or HBO Go, the performance is awful on both the 2.4ghz and 5ghz streams. It goes to complete crap if several other people in the house and are doing something at the same time.

I've been looking at Apple's Airport Extreme router. My local Best Buy has an open box still actually in the box with all the packing materials for $150. But I honestly don't know what I should get. I'm willing to spend up to $200 to get a high quality router. My household looks like the OPs. We can have up to 8 devices all connected and using it at once. My internet speeds aren't bad either. I'm on a 15/2 speed plan.

[CadetMahoney]

Of course some router recommendations that provide the necessary features would be ideal. I think he would be able to handle installation and micro-manage the bandwidth himself without anyone else noticing.

[br0ken_shad0w]

I have more devices connected to my 8 year old wireless router than your friend does and it works fine. My antennas are busted and the thing looks like hell but its still hanging in there. I know there will be a day I need to move on and purchase a new one, what are some routers you guys would recommend?

Wireless-N that can flash Tomato/DD-WRT.

[A.Romero]

Most likely is a bandwidth issue.

Get a faster connection.

[R_thanatos]

i do

BUt i'm the one paying for internet...
and i have set priorities ..

this screen is only for wifi ..i have a RELAI ( LAN ) too

Someone is abusing your internet connexion .. find out who is , and tell this person that too much torrents prevent other from using the net

[FyreWulff]

I eventually ran into the situation. The solution was really to just get a new router. Those cheaper ones everyone got back in '05/'06 just cannot handle a lot of connectivity.

Last month:

WRT54G:

- dropped out every time someone turned on their laptop for the first time that day
- dropped out every time someone logged into WoW
- completely gave up if a torrent was running
- completely lost internet connectivity if you transferred files over the network
- just randomly dropped connection anyway during the day because it could
- had to be rebooted about every two days because it's speed would actually slowly drop as time went on, and eventually even the configuration page would show up as a jumbled mess


This month, finally recieved a Linksys E3000, all of these problems went away.

[jvm]

Yeah, network bandwidth isn't really the problem in my house.

With a fairly big family, I've got no (a) time or (b) space or (c) audio to play online games. I figure in 10 years when my kids are all teenagers, I might be able to find time to play games with them.

But by then we'll probably all be talking about the good old days when we had electricity and running water.

[RedSwirl]

Since we're talking about this here, I've actually been having my own internet problems, but with only one computer in the house and haven't been able to get help anywhere.

I live in roughly the same situation as the OP's friend and have just as many devices connected to the router, but I can play Xbox games online just fine. My problem is that for some reason, my desktop's connection speed goes up and down wildly. I have to connect it through WiFi because it's too far away from the modem for wired, and in recent weeks for some reason I've had issues where sometimes the connection will be normal, but other times for several minutes it will slow down to practically nothing. The connection never goes out completely but the speed goes to crap, like < 100kb/s. Every single other device in the house connects with no problems.

I've tried every software solution I can on my end. Rebooting everything, re-installing drivers, re-installing in safe mode, re-installing the wireless card, static IP address, everything. Recently I turned off auto-tuning in the wireless card and cleared the DNS cache and that seems to have helped the connection a little bit but the problem isn't fully gone.