Hey guys! I am currently going to college to study Network Engineering and Security.
I will be soon living in a house shared with 5 other students. What is the router with the best QOS so I don’t get horrendous lag on the network when gaming or streaming? Now your probably going to ask what plan I have with my ISP, personally I have no bloody clue as of yet, my Landlord isn’t tech savy and when I asked he couldn’t tell me.
So all in all what would be the most effective router for this task?
Cheers!
PS: I currently own a D-Link DIR-850L Version A1 running QOS on my home network which is paired with a 5Mbp/s download and 1Mbp/s Upload and it’s shared with 3 people. My QOS appears to struggle greatly as my ping in games is always steady at 200MS to 300 MS ;-; but steady at 30MS when no one is home.
I have the lower tiered DSL-2770L which is fine but yours is much better in terms of configs. Also if peeps are connecting via wifi - set things in the advanced wifi section to: - beacon interval 1000ms - transmit power 100% - RTS threshold & Fragmentation: 1000 or therabouts each - DTIM interval - something low like 10
If you really get keen grab a dual band (2.4ghz & 5ghz) device and split the traffic that way.
Thanks! Mine does Dual Band, 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. I have it configured for QOS at home, just my theory is their simply isn't enough bandwidth to go around here vs what I am anticipating at the college house.
Once you move in there, try and get as many devices off wi-fi and physicaly connected, plus lay down some ground rules > if peeps be torrenting be sure to set an apporopriate download limit etc.
Well I have moved in and I am currently using my D-link DIR-850L but I have run into a terrible problem. Apparently everyone is disconnecting randomly even though we have a 100Mb/s Down with 10Mb/s Up. Everyone is currently wireless and we have over 12 devices connected at a single time, sometimes more.
Everyone is connecting to the 2.4Ghz band but our 5Ghz band simply isn't strong enough to pierce all the walls. I also don't have a spare computer for Pfsense so I am boned in that department.
Now I have two theories, one night when I conducted a network test at 3 AM I was getting speeds from .7Mb/s Down upto 180 Mb/s down. It was fluctuation incredibly on my router. Mind you this was through the 5Ghz band stand a few feet away from the router. - Before you pass judgement, this router worked excellently at home with a network shared with 4 people back at home with 6 devices and on a 5Mb/s Down and 2Mb/s Up connection. EDIT: The modem is a Hitron CGN3
I am currently waiting on my Cat6 to arrive so I can conduct further tests.
So what kind of solution can I do to prevent the disconnects and improve everyone's experience? Or is it possible that the cable modem is causing the outages?
Be sure you're the wifi is set to the least populated channel. Use a wifi analyzer on any device to check the overlap of nearby wireless networks. Also decrease beacon intervals, up the packet fragmentation thresholds etc. See my older post. If there are devices that have bad connections (ie they are at the other end of the house through a few walls), your whole network will suffer. The fix - homeplugs or cables. I wouldnt recommend wifi repeaters as there is already a shit load of ACK's floating around your environment. Even if there is a way you can reposition the D-Link to a more central area away from thick walls and devices that may interfere eg. microwaves.
My router doesn't allow me to adjust the beacon intervals or the packet fragmentation based on what I sow in the menu's.
The devices at the other end of the house are having a shitty connection so I am currently waiting on 100 Feet of Cat 6 and a wifi repeater/extender to arrive in the mail so I can setup downstairs.
The router is placed in the center of the house but not much has improved. The router is setup in the least populated channel currently. Which happens to be channel 7.
I think as I mentioned early it could be what I mentioned but with another theory.
Either the Modem is acting wonky and causing the fluctuations which I did see when connected to WiFi ( 5Ghz ) at 3 AM. My router cannot handle that many Wireless Devices. Or it's merely all the walls interfering with the signal causing lost packets.
capture some traffic using wireshark and have a look at the breakdown of the traffic ie. re-transmissions, acks, etc.
Or there is some basic packet stats available on the web portal - dropped. Also I think there may be a WMM setting you'll want to turn on as well, should be under advanced wifi. As well as some 20/40 co-existance option (helps if theres some channel overlapping in the area).
There are a heap of other QoS stuff you can configure - just refer to the manual and head to the QoS engine - from there you can tweak the queuing settings.
Either which way you look at the problem though ~ 12 people on a shared medium (wifi) is an incredible strain on the one access point especially if a few devices have a bad connection as they bring everyone else down as well.
Well things seem to be running smoothly now. The D-link is still acting as a wifi/router but only servicing upstairs WiFi and DHCP for the extra access point downstairs. Things are running excellently and surprisingly well after QoS was turned off and the addition of another access point...
