Router advice for lan gaming application

T

trooper11

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 19, 2004
Messages
350
Ive been trying to find any opinions on routers out there that would be good for lan gaming.

Currently I have a relatively old linksys wired router and it doesnt seem to be able to handle heavy traffic. Whenever I have less then 6 pcs playing games at the same time, its fine, but when I add a 6th or more, the ping spikes and then the I loose the connection all together. It seems like the router just cant handle the load.

What Id like is a quality WIRED router since I have no uses for wireless, but if the only good options are wireless as well, I could deal with that.

a 4-port variety of router is all I need, just one taht is reliable at handling high traffic of the gaming variety. Any suggestions would be very helpful. thanks.
 
Honestly it sounds like your current router is just dying... I'm running a 15 person LAN off from 2 seperate routers, (keeping my office seperate from the lan,( and 3 8-port routers.

Both routers are standard fare netgear's, (one is wired the other wireless.)

Works like a charm, no one pings above 10 or 15 on any of the games, (from FPS's to RTS's etc...)
 
there is one thing I didnt make clear

Im talking about 6 or more players playing locally and all of them playing online at once, thats where the heavy load issue could come into play.

another thing I forgot to mention. I am using a switch for all the pcs, so just one cable actually goes into the router, hence my need for just a reliable 4-port router.
 
trooper11 said:
there is one thing I didnt make clear

Im talking about 6 or more players playing locally and all of them playing online at once, thats where the heavy load issue could come into play.
Click to expand...

What game(s) are you playing, (this might be part of your issue), most residential services can't handle a lot of up-stream bandwidth, (typically I see cable signals in the 350k upstream region); and depending on the game it can't handle it regardless of the router your using.
 
Your clogging the tubes! (it had to be said)

I agree with the above poster, you likely are putting too much upstream and your connection simply can't handle it.
 
I'm not sure I'd only blame the router. Lets do some math.

Run several different online benchmarks..just having 1x PC online. See what your average download, and upload is. The smaller value will usually be your upload. Jot that number down.

Now...look at the games you play online. Each client you have....will need a certain amount of bandwidth. Lets take the old Battlefield game engine. Depending on how you have your clients game rate set (bandwidth setting)....each player will consume from 50 - 80 KB/sec of bandwidth.

Now take your benchmarked upload. Divide by the bandwidth requirement of the game you're playing...now you have the max number of players you can host on your connection...before your internet pipe is the bottleneck.

Now...yes, the horsepower of a router does come into play...I did a lot of performance tests of home routers when running a game server, and I've seen the differences in performance when having multiple clients play from behind the same router. But that was back years ago....like the original production run of the Linksys befsr41, the Netgear rp614, Nexland ISB SOHO, Netopia R910, etc. Most of todays generation routers have substantially more horsepower.
 
I am not using an average cable connection. Mine is a business direct line from Comcast that gets me 1.2 Mps (1200kps) in upload bandwidth.

The games being played over this connection include low end game slike Counterstrike and Day of Defeat, up to more robust games like BF2142.

The connection failures and latency spikes were occuring regardles of the game, even day of defeat would cause it when connecting 6 or more pcs.

Ive tested the line speed and I am getting my rated upload speed, so I think my connection can be ruled out.
 
Oh yeah, that link did give me the info I needed.

It looks like the Dlink Xtreme Gigabit router is the best of the best when it comes to wired performance and support for multiple connections. Im leaning heavily toward that one.


My current router is an older linksys wired 4-port router.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top