What's new

Seeing a lot of lag - time for an upgrade or a wireless extender?

  • SNBForums Code of Conduct

    SNBForums is a community for everyone, no matter what their level of experience.

    Please be tolerant and patient of others, especially newcomers. We are all here to share and learn!

    The rules are simple: Be patient, be nice, be helpful or be gone!

evil_mike

Occasional Visitor
Hey gang, long time listener, first time caller. I currently have a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 that's been pretty rock solid over the past few years, but as my kids have gotten more devices (iPods, Xbox One, etc.), I've noticed more and more latency on my network. I currently have two Xbox Ones, a PS4, a Wii U, four laptops, and a whole slew of mobile and home automation devices (Nest, Arlo camera, etc.), many of which can be online at the same time.

So here's my question - should I upgrade to a newer router (like a tri-band), add an extender, both, or other? I've been partial to Netgear thus far, so I've been looking at the R8500 and/or the AC1900 extender. I don't want to spend money I don't have to though, but I'm willing to spend it on gear if it's worth it.

Thanks!

Evil
 
I love the R7000, as it is a great piece of hardware, ( i have two running Xvortex / merlin port but both as AP's). With stock firmware, you are really blind as to what is going on. (processes, CPU usage, wifi bandwidth consumption etc). IMO, the NG R8500 is still maturing.
The EX7000 is pretty decent, (used it for a while) but I would set it as an Access Point, as opposed to a extender. Is it a bandwidth bottleneck issue? What bandwidth are you paying for from your ISP?
 
I currently have two Xbox Ones, a PS4, a Wii U, four laptops, and a whole slew of mobile and home automation devices (Nest, Arlo camera, etc.), many of which can be online at the same time.

the lag wont be caused by the router or its wifi but the usage and you prob wont fix that with anything new

however i would prob run a second ap and just connect the home automation and camera stuff on it , this will spread the load a bit , you prob just need a cheap 2.4 gig router / ap for these devices anyway

any of the tri band stuff is good but as suggested needs time to mature and get mu-mimo working correctly which is still 6 months away as reported
 
Would think we need details like how many wired vs wireless devices.

Look at current router usage logs for clues what is going on.

Could be lots of things, wifi interference, malware on a device or two, etc.
 
if you are getting lag the last thing you'd want to do is add a wifi extender as that adds even more lag. Try using wire instead and have QoS set priority to your games.
 
When you mention latency, are you referring to LAN-to-LAN (internal) or LAN-to-WAN (external) latency? Where do you experience the most obvious latency; gaming, browsing, etc? Do you have much internal traffic (Plex, media servers, NAS, SAMBA, NFS, etc)?

What is your internet speed?

I would assume that unless you have 200Mbit+ internet, that your lag is most likely caused by lack of QoS or DNS problems, not WiFi problems, but I am just guessing.

Any additional information that you can share will help.
 
Reading your thread fully, you have too many devices on wifi and many of them can be wired. Consider using ethernet wiring neatly, flat ones might be an option and with a bit of colour choosing and some tape you could hide the cables and get many of your devices wired.

The pricey option would be to get MU-MIMO or something like the AC3200 that has dual wifi assuming you have enough 5 Ghz clients. 2.4Ghz has slightly higher latency and is made worse by the fact that 2.4Ghz is densed with users. Both the wifi used by routers and not used have many that operate in that band including wireless devices, bluetooth, etc. If you can wire many devices, the AC88U would be a good choice with 8 ports otherwise even wiring 4 clients can help significantly.

MU-MIMO will only help if you have some MU-MIMO clients.

Do a site survey of the wifi traffic around you, you may need to do it multiple times a day. Auto may actually make things worse as i've seen wifi APs just changing their channels multiple times a day and seem to be hogging the frequency i use quite often. If you can use channel 13 or 14 and it is not illegal that would be good for 2.4 ghz assuming your clients support it. Make sure to manually set the channel and its not just the number of APs that should help you decide but also how heavy the wifi traffic is on a particular frequency.

Change your wifi settings, use things like short preamble and other wifi settings for high traffic areas. This helps lower latency on wifi a little.

When it comes to latency nothing beats wired. Wifi is a shared medium so it cant always transmit. Sure you can get up to 90% of the theoratical wifi bandwidth but not without massive packet lost so those fancy wifi numbers are useless. Practicality is more important.
 
Like the previous posts you (thus we) really are flying in the blind here. All you've really offered is "latency, lag time". Everything? Or just the interactive stuff like hopping from website to website or e-mail?

You've already a decent router, I think I'd like to know a little more before blindly throwing money at a new router. Kinda like a good mystery you need to start thinking about the who, what, when, where, why, etc. before shouting out, "Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a knife".

So, as Captain Renault said in Casablanca, "Round up the usual suspects". In general you're looking at "shared resources" as that is where one user is most likely to impact another.
  1. Internet Up-link / Down-link. (What speeds are you supposed to get / what are you paying for?) If you're in a fiber city where $50 gets you 100 Mbps it's less likely a problem than if you're in a 3rd world city like me where it's a car payment for 10 by 1 Mbps. (Then it moves towards the top of the list.) If it does turn out to be the "pinch point" you don't always have to throw money at it as your router already supports bandwidth limiters and Quality of Service (kinda like Fast-path at Disney World).
  2. Wireless / wireless congestion. Also not the end of the world. You can cherry pick connections to hard wire and/or move a couple connections from 2.4Ghz to 5Ghz (or vice-versa). Worst case you might be looking at a wired AP or (dare I say?) a range extender.
  3. And let's add your security cameras to that list. I assume they're wireless and store their video clips in the cloud (a double whammy)?

Make a list of what you can test, make a chart, test, record. Add and remove stress (kids), remeasure and record. Load a Wi-Fi Analyzer onto your smart phone and walk around the house. Write down where signals are good and not so good. Does anyone work/play in the not so good areas? Are any of your (wireless?) security cameras on the fringe? Are any of your channels contesting with the neighbors' channels?

Tomorrow is Saturday, get up before the kids and start testing while everything is reasonably quiescent. Hardwire one of your laptops to your router. Run an Internet Speed Test. Bounce through a couple websites. Try e-mail. Record results and impressions.
  • Now connect wireless at 5Ghz, do the same things and record results and impressions.
  • Now connect wireless at 2.4Ghz and repeat as above.
Now disconnect your cameras, do it all again, record and analyze.

Feel free to reconnect your cameras and rerun tests (looking for consistency with your first set of tests).

Now as the kids start waking up involve them one by one in your new family mystery game. Record how they connect, what they're doing (on-line gaming, streaming a video) while you rerun your test suite.

Take guesses. Make it a family game. Add or subtract stress to prove or disprove emerging theories. Like if I was one of your kids I'd blame it on Dad's security cameras. I'd suspect they were taking Internet bandwidth and I'd suspect that at least one of the cameras was on the ragged edge of 2.4Ghz thus slowing all users on that wireless radio.
  • So on our first test suite all three networks should show the same results from the Internet Speed Test (assuming all the kids were still in bed). If the 2.4 test is slower than the rest that tends to support that kid's hypothesis.
    • Now the 2nd suite was with no cameras. All three connection types should not only show better performance, all three should now show similar performance (this assumes all the kids were still in bed) further supporting that kid's hypothesis.
  • Confirm with Wifi Analyzer.
  • Let the kids play, see who gets grumpy first. See if he's on the 2.4Ghz radio.
  • Disconnect the suspect cameras. What happens?
Of course nothing is ever that simple. Expect to find 2 or 3 problems before everything is wonderful again.

Learn more, share more and all those SNB vets will be able to offer more. Best of Luck!
 
Last edited:
YOWZA!! Lots of good information here. Thanks everyone. I have Comcast and average around 125MB. I guess "lag" was probably the wrong word; typically, I don't have many issues with latency when I'm gaming. What I HAVE noticed recently is that when my kids are online (i.e. my son is playing MineCraft on the computer and my daughter is watching videos on her iPod or playing MineCraft on the Xbox One, I notice other things slow down A LOT; browser pages load slower, FaceTime/Skype lags A LOT, etc. I turned OFF QoS to see if that helps with the issue, and I also tinkered with the 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands (I just discovered the built-in wireless scanner for MacOS X yesterday).

Let me restate the question a bit: part of the reason I'm considering an upgrade is because I want to give my parents my old router (theirs is an older Netgear that's dying). What would be the best "bang for the buck" upgrade for me? I also have a bunch of my wireless entertainment devices (PS4, downstairs Xbox One, Apple TV, receiver) all communicating wirelessly to the router (it's not possible to hard wire it, as the router is in the corner of the house), and I was wondering if getting the Netgear AC1900 and plugging them all into that would improve streaming quality, latency, etc.
 
Aha, that helps!

First of all 125Mbps? I have no sympathy. Only envy as I sit here with 6 x 0.38 Mbps.

So ... your problem is with the interactive stuff. QoS shines at that. You will ultimately want it back on but you will need to research how to prioritize web, skype, etc. over kids. I don't have a Netgear but I was able to set my Asus to do exactly that. You will be happy once QoS is set up properly, your parents ... not so much.

See if QoS properly set makes you happy before taking the next step.

You confuse me, in paragraph one the kids are happy, in paragraph two not so much?

Your router is in the corner of the house because that's where Comcast comes in? Worst case you can always lay a wire along the floor butted against the wall. (Flat cabling and/or molding painted to match goes a long ways.) Should get you closer to the center of the house. If you have a basement drop a cable through a small hole in the floor, run it along the basement ceiling and then back up through another small hole.

Still not happy then maybe the range extender. (Still not seeing the need for a new router besides just wanting one and justifying it by giving the old one to your parents : -) I like the range extender you chose because it can also be wired as an access point ... worst case. I also like the Fastlane feature, I had good luck with that at the car lot.

And, towards your plan, I've also had good luck with devices hardwired into my range extender ... once I got it properly placed. It was kinda like an inside-out AP then.

From what I understand Netgear makes some great routers but I really like my Asus largely because of the built-in graphic traffic monitor. I finally have a feel for what's going on. I just loaded in the Merlin mod and now I can even drill down and see what devices are spiking traffic. Said the tortoise, "fastest ain't always the bestest".
 
Last edited:
I can't recommend Netgear with their slow or non-existent issuing of firmware (for at least security fixes) after the initial debut of any specific model.

With an Asus router, you not only have timely updates from Asus even for quite old models, but you also have access to the RMerlin firmware and the forks thereof.

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/satellite-internet-exede.30262/#post-236222

The above is an example of the continuing quest for excellence even with 3 or 4 year old routers.

In your situation, I would expect that you will find good benefit with a Tri-Band router like the RT-AC3100. I would think that the processing power of the RT-AC88U or the RT-AC5300 would also be appreciated by you.

But the only way to know where the best price/performance ratio is for you is to try two or three of them one after another and make your choice then. The RT-AC5300 is very pricey, but if it offers what you're looking for (and from reading about it, it seems it will; range, throughput, ram and processing power all in one unit), then it will be a cheap solution in the long run.

Are you able to buy these, compare and return the 'losers'? That is the best and only way to know for sure if a new router will truly be an upgrade for your specific environment and network use.
 
The best QoS are in routers like mikrotik and a linux servers and some other embedded configurable routers. They can perform all sorts of QoS that no consumer router can do. That said your router choice is dependent on a few things. If you do have 125Mb/s of internet instead of 1Gb/s (125MB/s) than QoS can help more however minecraft isnt bandwidth hungry unless they switched to p2p. Web browsing only causes bandwidth spikes but overall very low bandwidth. in total even if you have 125Mb/s of internet you actually do have sufficient bandwidth, i think it is your current router that is handling it poorly. Also do a bufferbloat test as if you have a bufferbloat problem it could explain the lag. A good router can eliminate bufferbloat assuming the issue isnt the ISP or modem.

Wire clients that you can.
 
bufferbloat
Great comment. QoS (on some routers) could still help as its job is to push preferred packets to the head of the line.

Most routers let you set your QoS priorities. Some make it easy, just click "Skype", "web", "voice", etc. Others make you guess and look up the TCP / UDP port numbers. Some even give you a default QoS configuration (that you can change). One router I looked at was preset to prioritize "gaming" (which would also have messed up Mike's browsing and Skype experience).

Mike doesn't say but 100 down doesn't necessarily mean 100 up. He also doesn't say how he's hooked up. Piggybacking on your comment the Netgear might be saying, "ah, Gigabit WAN port" only to be queued into a Comcast something waiting for the 10 to 100 pipe to clear. (Bandwidth limiter setting might also help.)
 
Unless you are saturating your internet connection, traffic-shaping/QoS is not going to help much.

With the limited services you are running, your internet connection does not seem to be over-loaded, download or upload. My 12Mbit/768Kbit internet connection with an 802.11n (RT-N66U) WiFi network simultaneously handles more services than you mention with no problems.

Are you sure there are no other services running? An iPhone iCloud backup can saturate the upload for tens of minutes (or hours, in my case), as can a Dropbox folder sync, or a Google Images cloud backup, etc, etc.

No torrenting happening on your network?
 
Unless you are saturating your internet connection, traffic-shaping/QoS is not going to help much.

With the limited services you are running, your internet connection does not seem to be over-loaded, download or upload. My 12Mbit/768Kbit internet connection with an 802.11n (RT-N66U) WiFi network simultaneously handles more services than you mention with no problems.

Are you sure there are no other services running? An iPhone iCloud backup can saturate the upload for tens of minutes (or hours, in my case), as can a Dropbox folder sync, or a Google Images cloud backup, etc, etc.

No torrenting happening on your network?

No torrenting. I'm honestly starting to wonder if there's something else going on, as others have mentioned. Not malware, but the latency I'm seeing actually being on the other end. I think I was trying to justify buying a shiny new toy, but you folks have successfully talked me out of it...although I might grab one of the AC1900 range extenders to see if it helps lower my ping on my consoles :)

Thanks all. I guess I will indeed wait until I see a recommendation to upgrade from the AC1900-class routers appears on this site.

Evil
 
I currently have a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 that's been pretty rock solid over the past few years, but as my kids have gotten more devices (iPods, Xbox One, etc.), I've noticed more and more latency on my network. I currently have two Xbox Ones, a PS4, a Wii U, four laptops, and a whole slew of mobile and home automation devices (Nest, Arlo camera, etc.), many of which can be online at the same time.

Put your latency critical devices on the wire, getting away from WiFi all together... PowerLine or MOCA, but preferably a CAT5 cable...
 
Actual data has been piecemeal. You've suggested you're paying for 125 Mbps x 12 Mbps? What are actual Internet Speed Tests showing? Are they rock solid? Do they vary a lot? What are they like in the morning? What are they like when the kids are up?

How about simple ping times? (ping -n 100 www.google.com from the command line) What do they look like throughout the day?

You mention Arlo but we have no idea if you've a single camera or if you bought the five camera package? They could account for 3 Mbps right there. Now you do have plenty of bandwidth but if I (think Skype, Facetime, browser) have to wait behind the camera streams that could be an extra quarter second (latency) and that's where QoS comes in. Worse for the kids on the same Wi-Fi as your cameras.

Now you're starting to suspect the other end? Always a possibility (although you've already implied you only have trouble if others are playing and/or streaming. Anyway, if sluggish is usually for an hour or so (vs. just a few minutes) it might be easy to check out. Run a few speed tests and pings (from wired and wireless) while things are good and run a few more when it's crappy. Also, while things are still crappy, shut off wireless and try a couple more. That's three test suites. Study the results. If suite A is good but B and C are both bad you might start looking at the Internet. If only suite B is bad look at yourself a little closer. (Or something like that, where's my coffee?)

Buying a new router should be fun. If it doesn't fix anything that would suck some of the fun out of it. In fact, down the road, I'm looking forward to hearing all about it. I'm thinking if you do get your new tri-band you could dedicate the 2nd 5Ghz radio to talk only with your new range extender (on its dedicated Fastpath radio). With all the toys hardwired to the range extender (as per one of your earlier posts) everything should scream (assuming you found great placement).
 
Last edited:

Sign Up For SNBForums Daily Digest

Get an update of what's new every day delivered to your mailbox. Sign up here!
Top