Looking to buy good gaming router for apartment/parents house.

[Bloodham]

Hi there, I'm in quite a bit of a conundrum that has kept me up for the past few nights, I'm looking to buy a good mid tier router from $250-$350 to work in a new apartment and later my parents house when I move back.

I've been looking at these two routers:

• NETGEAR R7800 Nighthawk X4S AC2600 Smart WiFi MU-MIMO Gigabit Router
• ASUS RT-AC88U

I quite like both of these routers and would be willing to purchase either or, just wondering what would be the best fit, I am a PC gamer mostly but I'll also being living with another tenant for four months and I would hope to be able to provide excellent service for his needs as well while being able to allow that my gaming doesn't go interrupted.

I'll be in the room directly in front of the router with a wall between us so I need a router with great range and stability so that latency doesn't become an issue, if I could get any help from the forum that would be fantastic, I'm open to all suggestions about my first purchase of a router that is within my price range.

My desktop is running on a 802.11ac wireless card while the other tenant would just be on a regular 802.11n.

 

[sfx2000]

I've found something interesting in that QC-Atheros and Marvell based routers tend to have about half the latency across the router than Broadcom - it's not much but it's been fairly consistent across different brands...

LAN to WAN, and WAN to LAN - doesn't really matter...

Marvell - 1.7 mSec
QC-Atheros - 2.4 mSec
Broadcom - 4.1 mSec

Not sure why the Broadcom is adding additional latency here - the Marvell I understand, it's a bit more than what I see on an intel based machine where WAN/LAN on the box are not switched, but both local interfaces (I see around 950 uSec on that box) on a very fast local interface...

Inside the LAN they're about the same - around 100 uSec on ethernet port to port - as a point of reference, I see around 4 uSec across a GigE switch (pretty much all of them - I've got samples from Netgear (managed), Linksys (unmanaged), and D-Link (unmanaged))

Speed wise - they're all about the same... and over WiFi, one would probably not notice it..

Only reason why I bring this up is latency matters, and it adds up on every hop... and for applications that are sensitive to latency, such as gaming, it's important to note..

 

[Bloodham]

I've found something interesting in that QC-Atheros and Marvell based routers tend to have about half the latency across the router than Broadcom - it's not much but it's been fairly consistent across different brands...

LAN to WAN, and WAN to LAN - doesn't really matter...

Marvell - 1.7 mSec
QC-Atheros - 2.4 mSec
Broadcom - 4.1 mSec

Not sure why the Broadcom is adding additional latency here - the Marvell I understand, it's a bit more than what I see on an intel based machine where WAN/LAN on the box are not switched, but both local interfaces (I see around 950 uSec on that box) on a very fast local interface...

Inside the LAN they're about the same - around 100 uSec on ethernet port to port - as a point of reference, I see around 4 uSec across a GigE switch (pretty much all of them - I've got samples from Netgear (managed), Linksys (unmanaged), and D-Link (unmanaged))

Speed wise - they're all about the same... and over WiFi, one would probably not notice it..

Only reason why I bring this up is latency matters, and it adds up on every hop... and for applications that are sensitive to latency, such as gaming, it's important to note..

I would 100% make the jump to LAN if possible but unfortunately I'm unable to just due to the nature of where the router is in the living room and where my room is, I'm mostly just trying to find the best performance with serviceable latency and I feel like the Netgear Nighthawk 7800 X4S might be the best in this area due to MU-MIMO technology.

 

[sfx2000]

I would 100% make the jump to LAN if possible but unfortunately I'm unable to just due to the nature of where the router is in the living room and where my room is, I'm mostly just trying to find the best performance with serviceable latency and I feel like the Netgear Nighthawk 7800 X4S might be the best in this area due to MU-MIMO technology.

Probably don't need MU - any AC1900 class Router/AP will likely work well in your case - consider the R7000

 

[pete y testing]

I'm looking to buy a good mid tier router

• NETGEAR R7800 Nighthawk X4S AC2600 Smart WiFi MU-MIMO Gigabit Router

• ASUS RT-AC88U

one would hardly call ether of these mid teir as they are pretty much as good as it gets in the domestic router world at the current time

living with another tenant for four months and I would hope to be able to provide excellent service for his needs as well while being able to allow that my gaming doesn't go interrupted.

then get an asus and use its bandwidth limiting so each of you gets a share of the bandwidth pie and does not effect each other

I'll be in the room directly in front of the router with a wall between us so I need a router with great range and stability so that latency doesn't become an issue,

your only 1 wall away , 1 wall is no issue for most wireless AC routers

My desktop is running on a 802.11ac wireless card while the other tenant would just be on a regular 802.11n.

imho you need the asus rt-ac68u

the asus rt-ac88u is overkill and does not get you much extra in the way of coverage

see

https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=7D5C...1A0742!987&parId=7D5CB240BE1A0742!144&o=OneUp

and those results are at 25 meters and through 3/4 walls etc

pete

 

[sfx2000]

@pete y testing - figured you would have called me on the latency issue with Broadcom vs. QC-Atheros vs. Marvell

 

[pete y testing]

just an alt point of view

 

[sfx2000]

just an alt point of view

Don't get me started again on RAM and Routers, lol...

 

[RMerlin]

Wifi is certainly not a problem with BCM. I get 1-2 ms between an RT-AC88U and an Intel 7265 AC.

C:\Users\Eric>ping stargate88 -n 10

Pinging stargate88.lostrealm.lan [192.168.10.1] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.10.1: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

Ping statistics for 192.168.10.1:
    Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 2ms, Average = 1ms

 

[System Error Message]

I get <1ms with wifi latency with my asus routers ever since my first one which was the AC68U. I was using wireless AC on one of the common dual channel intel cards.

I dont think the platform matters much with latency because we're just talking about microseconds difference. Usually marvel has the worst latency on a NIC but thats in a difference of 200-300microseconds. I have the BT homehub 5A which is a dual core lantiq MIPS and upon swapping it out with my CCR router which uses TILEGX my internet latency drops by 2ms connecting through ethernet. So if the goal here is to reduce latency than CPU connected ports are the best way and with wifi you will need to change some settings.

A gaming router isnt really different from any router. Its hard to call a product gaming orientated other than just the looks really. Sure the router may have predefined QoS rules and so on but with some work even a normal router can be good. All that matters is latency and you might as well use ethernet instead of wifi if gaming is important for you and use a router with CPU connected ports.

So if the ASUS broadcom ports are all directly part of the SoC rather than using a switch than internet latency may be a bit better. The more minimalistic or integrated the hardware is the less latency it will have so unswitched and CPU connected ports on the router offer the lowest latency coupled with a decent CPU, Pipe and RAM. So if you really want to lower your latency go with a mikrotik CCR as the CPU connected ports, DDR3 dual channel RAM, a good interface chip and pipe, a decent CPU offer the latency and performance for gaming that you cant get with your typical gaming consumer router. Even the ubiquiti edgerouter has CPU connected ports but the CPU itself leaves much to be desired as it is old but the more recent ones which use a different CPU can be considered.

Usually a lot of consumer routers typically have a seperate switch chip to the CPU. So you have the CPU itself, the switch chip where the LAN ports are, the wifi chips that connect to the CPU. How the wifi chips connect whether via PCIe, bus or RGMII is important in throughput and latency and whether or not a dedicated chip is used (increases latency). But even than on the consumer router level the best you can achieve is probably less than 1ms difference on the high end or good design compared to a typical consumer router.

If choosing between netgear and ASUS, Netgear uses the typical consumer router layout whereas ASUS uses stuff thats part of the SoC. Since you are using Wifi however you will need to see the block diagram and how wifi is connected.

You may want to consider powerline because with wifi as the traffic increases the latency will also increase significantly.

When i game online because i dont use wifi i get near LAN pings in FPS games so even with games where the enemy has the advantage of better gear and you only have free starter gear having the lowest ping gives you a huge advantage in games that do not cater to laggers.

 

[sfx2000]

Wifi is certainly not a problem with BCM. I get 1-2 ms between an RT-AC88U and an Intel 7265 AC.

That sounds about right - and LAN to LAN, all solutions seem to be pretty much the same...

Check WAN to LAN, LAN to WAN.

With and without NAT in place, and it doesn't seem to be SW, as testing against NetBSD (Airport AC) and Linux (R7000, borrowed RT-AC68U B1), it's fairly repeatable - so this points towards HW and the how the interfaces are implemented on that chipset.

QCA and Marvell in the AC1900 class don't seem to have the issue... it's not a big issue, but milliseconds do add up, and for folks that are latency sensitive - e.g. gaming, stock trading, etc, it's something to be aware of.

 

[RMerlin]

Check WAN to LAN, LAN to WAN.

Too much trouble, I have to power down my modem for 10 minutes every time I switch router in front of it.

 

[sfx2000]

Just try it behind the primary router... simulate the WAN connection