Gaming Routers

v3ttel

Has anybody any experience with gaming routers? My current router has no QoS of any description.

Spent a while researching and it seems like the D-Link DGL-4500 Xtreme N Gaming Router is the best one to go with. Amazon.com won't ship it to Ireland though, and the D-Link site is literally twice the price.

Worth the cash? And if so, where would be a reliable place to purchase from that'll ship to Ireland?

Edit: I am looking for a router for gaming with a good QoS. Don't get hung up on the the term "gaming router".

Spunge

Gaming router?
That sounds like a scam or something.

Remember this thing ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_NIC

Antar Bolaeisk

I would not touch anything with the word gaming on it, it's general a sign that it's overpriced and not much good.

I've a linksys thing (too far away for me to check the name) that's served me well for the last couple of years and Linksys seem to be a decent enough brand (they're a cheapy Cisco if I remember correctly) and with some models there's the option for custom firmware which can open up a whole load of customisation.

The first thing I would do though is make sure I've a wired connection to the router and not a wireless connection.

Also, are you looking for a modem/router or just a router?

landsleaving

I have a D-Link Wireless N router and it works perfectly, never any problems and it was about a fifth of the price of the range you're talking about. Not worth it would be a massive understatement for those gaming routers, unless you have a 1000mb line and your console/pc is in another county.

v3ttel

Spunge wrote: »

Gaming router?
That sounds like a scam or something.

Remember this thing ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_NIC

It's not a scam if you kinda know what you're after, it is basically a router with a good QoS feature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_service

But, if you go into a certain stores and ask for a gaming router you can expect to pay €200 and come out with something that isn't what you wanted, if that is what you mean.

landsleaving wrote: »

I have a D-Link Wireless N router and it works perfectly, never any problems and it was about a fifth of the price of the range you're talking about. Not worth it would be a massive understatement for those gaming routers, unless you have a 1000mb line and your console/pc is in another county.

I think $100 is very, very reasonable for an N router with decent QoS. The problem is that I'd like to know how decent it is, otherwise I might aswell stick with the one I have.

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

I would not touch anything with the word gaming on it, it's general a sign that it's overpriced and not much good.

If you buy from the wrong sources (PC World, etc), yeah, absolutely. I was looking at a Belkin router and its literally €80 more expensive than I can find it for online. Don't worry, I'm not going to pay for something just because it has the word gaming on it, I think this is what you mean

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

I've a linksys thing (too far away for me to check the name) that's served me well for the last couple of years and Linksys seem to be a decent enough brand (they're a cheapy Cisco if I remember correctly) and with some models there's the option for custom firmware which can open up a whole load of customisation.

That would be a possible option if I could put the dd-wrt firmware on it. Seems pretty flexible from what I've heard but I've no first hand experience, so I'm not 100% sold on that option yet.

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

The first thing I would do though is make sure I've a wired connection to the router and not a wireless connection.

Wired is not an option. The problem I'm trying to solve is latency when there are multiple users, moving to wired isn't going to make any difference really as its not the bottleneck, but I can see where your coming from.

Basically what I need is for any PS3, Xbox, etc to have higher priority traffic than a PC, cut down on ping times (which are very good when there is a smallish load on the connection, and I think can still be pretty good when the connection is getting hammered with the right traffic priority).

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

Also, are you looking for a modem/router or just a router?

Just a router will do the finest, not DSL.

Spunge

I don't know much about QoS but my eircom router has a lot of options for QoS, i was using it to limit traffic to certain mac addresses etc. Surely it cant be that expensive for that feature

Burgo

Get something like this flash it with this and set your own QoS policy!

kippy

Gaming Router?
What absolute tosh - Perhaps if you went into a shop and asked for a router that features an option to enable QoS?
There are lots of consumer routers out there with this feature.

Antar Bolaeisk

Rooney10 wrote: »

Snip

Ah, I sees you know something about routers then.

With regards to flashing a Linksys, any of the ones I've done have been easy enough, there's a lot of guides out there with good step by step instructions. Tomato or DD-WRT also offer great flexibility with QoS without the need to buy a massively expensive router.

Kinetic^

Gaming router.... nothing but marketing waffle, seems to be working on people too.

cherryghost

What Antar said. Get a cheap Linksys router and get Tomato running on it. It really works wonders. Tweaking with it allowed me to reduce my ping by about 20ms, share the connection speeds evenly between 4 computers and monitor every single incoming connection to the router.

PogMoThoin

I have QOS working perfectly on a Linksys router running DD-WRT. I can game or skype with torrents running or with the kids watching youtube videos. It takes a little trial and error, you need to limit inbound and outbound bandwidth to about 85-90% of what you're actually getting (speedtests will always show 85-90% of what you're getting with QOS enabled, its a trade-off for it to work correct), so no single device can have all the bandwidth, then you prioritise by protocol. Premium is high priority (games, mumble, teamspeak, skype), express is standard (html, http, flash, gif), bulk is low priority (bittorrent, ftp, utorrent).



You should not set many devices priority or you will mess your protocol rules. The only devices that I've set at premium priority by mac address is my Android phone and Boxee Box, when I'm browsing using my phone I'd like max speed, and its also the same with the Boxee box streaming internet content to my TV.

v3ttel

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I have QOS working perfectly on a Linksys router running DD-WRT. I can game or skype with torrents running or with the kids watching youtube videos. It takes a little trial and error, you need to limit inbound and outbound bandwidth to about 85-90% of what you're actually getting (speedtests will always show 85-90% of what you're getting with QOS enabled, its a trade-off for it to work correct), so no single device can have all the bandwidth, then you prioritise by protocol. Premium is high priority (games, mumble, teamspeak, skype), express is standard (html, http, flash, gif), bulk is low priority (bittorrent, ftp, utorrent).



You should not set many devices priority or you will mess your protocol rules. The only devices that I've set at premium priority by mac address is my Android phone and Boxee Box, when I'm browsing using my phone I'd like max speed, and its also the same with the Boxee box streaming internet content to my TV.

Cheers, this is exactly what I was looking for and exactly what I'm trying to do. Is there a classification for PS3/Xbox Live traffic (theres probably a generic gaming traffic classification on the screenshot but I just don't know what its called/or I am blind)?

dd-wrt is probably the way to go. I wasn't totally convinced before as I have never used it.

PogMoThoin

Rooney10 wrote: »

Cheers, this is exactly what I was looking for and exactly what I'm trying to do. Is there a classification for PS3/Xbox Live traffic (theres probably a generic gaming traffic classification on the screenshot but I just don't know what its called/or I am blind)?

dd-wrt is probably the way to go. I wasn't totally convinced before as I have never used it.

I didn't show you the rest of the page (cos I didn't feel like editing out mac addresses), there are options to prioritise by mac address, router port or ip address. This gives you options for your console the same way I prioritise my phone and Boxee Box. I've a Qos rule added for Arma as thats the game I mostly play.

Burgo

Rooney10 wrote: »

dd-wrt is probably the way to go. I wasn't totally convinced before as I have never used it.

Been using dd-wrt for a good while now and it is great to use, can fiddle around and customize a huge amount of features.

Overheal

Belkin play and Share, N300, N600, N750, etc.

Netgear Simultaneous Dualband N600

Linksys E4200

I'm sure there are others but those are what I'm familiar with. You don't honestly need a serious router to find QoS though, and depending on your setup (a PC and a console, and not much else) you dont really need a "Gaming" router. A Linksys E2000 or a Netgear N300 would be plenty-fine, and have QoS.

Has to be said though, open source firmware. And, if you DO want a more expensive router, yes, these do have better specs (processor, onboard memory, gigabit lan, etc) but obviously you pay more, and do you really need those things?

fasty

I have a Linksys E4200. Expensive but very good and has QoS support and if you're so inclined, pretty good throughput over 802.11N.

Although I find that falls a little when using it in dual band mode.