Help with lag on online gaming for nephew

Hi all

my nephew who lives in a mad house of 5 is on Origin ADSL, but he gets lags all the time as his mother and sister facebook on mobiles while netflix is going on the TV.,.. ive told him his best options is to get a 2nd line installed for £130 and pay £24 a month for his OWN broadband with Plusnet wired in straight into his room...but... if this isnt an option whats next?

would a gaming router help? they use the supplied pap and they are all on the wifi too

as xDSL uses thousands of channels over 'x' Mhz cant gaming routers cap off certain "tones" just for the gamer?
edit: ive been told this is not possible and gaming routers are more snake oil than anything else with just more options and better QoS (which I enabled in their pap router months ago no change)

any help is appreciated

thanks

Edited by paulb100 (Fri 08-Nov-19 21:18:41)

Its going to be the connection is maxing out with the streaming media going on, a faster connection (FTTC etc) with more bandwidth or a separate line would be the best way to go

Gaming router will not help as generally need a faster connection for them to be of great use.

A different connection dedicated for the purpose of gaming.

OR

Upgrade to fibre/fttc/vdsl2 assuming much better speeds than ADSL and then a router with QoS (which is what a gaming router needs to be) to limit the impact of other users activity and gaming should be less affected.

>as xDSL uses thousands of channels over 'x' Mhz cant gaming routers cap off certain "tones" just for the gamer?
Tones is referring to the DSL signal and gaming routers/QoS do not work by segmenting the dal tones. Rather they work at the TCP/IP level and manage the volume of traffic from any signal task and can give priority to things like UDP packets which are commonly needed for online gaming

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Tones is referring to the DSL signal and gaming routers/QoS do not work by segmenting the dal tones. Rather they work at the TCP/IP level and manage the volume of traffic from any signal task and can give priority to things like UDP packets which are commonly needed for online gaming

The tones are layer 1 maybe 2 more the physical layer than network.

The FTTC connection upgrade is the best thing to do though

Edited by deleted (Fri 08-Nov-19 23:32:34)

thanks guys...i will tell them to upgrade to fibre and get a gaming router with QoS and a long Ethernet as they all use wifi

cheers

What bandwidths are being achieved by the ADSL connection? Also, have you considered running a broadband quality monitor on the connection so you can see what levels of latency & latency variation are being experienced?

Modern QoS solutions with clever queue management (CAKE for example) can achieve apparent miracles in the upstream direction. Downstream is always a bit more challenging as you're at the wrong end of the link and some of the ISP's shapers & buffering settings are decidedly sub-optimal but some control and host fairness can be implemented.

But for an example of what can be achieved with CAKE here's my 79/20 vdsl line with (believe it or not) a pretty much constant upstream backup going on at full chat - the point being, I can't tell when there's a backup going or not. https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/...

16/1 I think....poor for that use I know

but doesnt netflix and mobiles streaming videos use UDP too?

Edited by paulb100 (Sat 09-Nov-19 16:44:00)

it they all use wifi, then I suggest he installs an Ethernet cable to his gaming machine

im going to try that first...but inevitibly the 1Mb upload just isnt gunna manage with 2-3 phones, Alexa streaming and Netflix streaming

So there�s your answer, all those users hanging off a a slow speed connection, especially that upload.

In reply to a post by paulb100:

but doesnt netflix and mobiles streaming videos use UDP too?

Yeah they do and that's layer 3 like TCP/IP, the sync (tones) are done on layer 1

Netflix is TCP rather than UDP usually, specifically DASH - Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP

best thing to do is get a second connection for gaming, even on fttc other users will cause lag in games. talktalk fibre 40/10 is cheap and will let him game just fine.

Did your suggestion works?

no use - its 15m of LAN cable he needs but even if ordered the 0.7Mb upload and 4Mb download just isn't gonna help...it would be a waste of time.

his mother needs to upgrade to an 80/20 product I think (house of 4 and a newborn) AND install some sort of decent QoS router, all this would cost lots of money which at xmas coming up she just won't have....AND...as long as her mobile/facebook/Netflix and Alexa work she wouldn't really care about one of her sons having lag because of it, (the other rarely plays Xbox)

he gets £40 a month pocket money so he could easily afford it himself....BUT..he says he doesnt always get it as he doesnt always get his "unfair" chores done hehe....can't win man! im running uphill with it.

end of the day he needs his own line and I'm not getting involved any further because I know their resolve, it just won't be taken on board - it has already been suggested to the mother with nil reply to those questions./suggestions

so my final suggestions to them where:
upgrade to fibre and get a decent gaming router
the son gets his own line

with the costs of both it would be better if he gets his own line....

Edited by paulb100 (Tue 12-Nov-19 12:33:07)

Depending on your own finances of course, it could be a great (but long-term commitment) Christmas present to the nephew. Or if his mother would accept it, better and far less costly to you as an upgrade for the existing connection .

Or perhaps just the top up cost of the upgrade. She might be able to accept that as a present to all concerned, getting rid of I assume constant complaints by the boy and future similar ones as his siblings grow up.

I doubt if the upgrade would cost a lot, and migrating at the same time away from Origin to Plusnet sounds wise to me.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 12-Nov-19 13:41:36)

Have you guys considered 4g broadband? Your nephew could use the adsl service while the rest of the family use the 4g service. Of course, that will depend on the speeds they get via 4g. You could get 4g from three with a router for £20 a month, maybe even cheaper if you are already a customer. You have 14 days to send it back if it doesn't work out too well. And there is no new line install fee.

And if Three don't offer good speeds, there are a few other providers that offer unlimited service.

Edited by deleted (Tue 12-Nov-19 15:14:34)