Decent WiFi gaming performance/QOS

[Carnagerover]

Hi all,

I will try and keep this condensed, I had been enjoying Geforce Now on an Nvidia Shield at 4K/60fps, I bought a Laptop with a 1440p/120hz screen to use with it. In my Sons room his PC has been connected using powerline and his Xbox via WiFi.

To improve both our connections I bought a EERO Pro 6E 2 unit system;

Had nothing but issues with it, for some reason it increased my base latency to 40ms and I was losing packets. My sons room was better connected now at 230Mbps for his PC and Xbox, not great but much better than the powerline. I was hoping it would be good as I know it has FQ-Codel and as avid gamers we try and keep the ping as low as possible. Despite trying everything possible with EERO support we couldn't improve it. They mentioned that it could be basically false positives, the ping response not being prioritized and their plus security/ad blocking could be messing with it. Long story short it didn't get better no matter how much stuff we turned off.

Next I bought a TP-Link EX75 Pro 6E system;

I haven't had any issues with my ping and as you can see from the picture its maxing out the connection on my 6E laptop. In my Sons room his PC now connects at >600Mbps which is a big improvement over the EERO. The only downside to the TP-Link is that it doesn't have FQ-Codel, it just has the ability to prioritize a few devices and you can enter your internet bandwidth to make sure that it knows when to allocate more juice to the high priority user which wasn't really what we were after.

The reason I got the 6E router was for Geforce Now as at 1440p/120hz I was getting some packet loss on 5Ghz when using geforce now on my original router. I also thought that getting the EERO would be a benefit as with FQ-Codel, the gaming packets can get out first when my NAS is downloading for example. However looking at my ping with my connection fully maxed out as long as I am connecting to a decent server in the first place when gaming it might not be a massive issue?

I had also looked at getting a standalone router and then running a wire to my sons bedroom which I already know would be the best option. Do these routers with 4x4 multi bands rather than 2x2 have a better shot and not becoming limited in bandwidth when serving multiple clients as they have more to give. Sounds obvious but I only know enough to be dangerous when it comes to this stuff.

Long story long, has using the 6E channel ruled out that it was any form of Wifi congestion causing my packet loss on Geforce now as my laptop was the only device using it and no-one around me has it? I know the XE75 Pro 6E uses 6E for backhaul but there was nothing connected to the extender when I was testing.

Do I need a router that has some form of bufferbloat assistance as latency is key when streaming games as well when using a mouse.

Any point in trying a router with more WiFi girth to give out?

 

[Tech Junky]

Any point in trying a router with more WiFi girth to give out?

I would just focus on an actual AP and not a router that does anything with the traffic. First of all it rules out any wifi issues directly. If it's still not doing what you want then focus on the router it's connected to. If it's still an issue make the ISP work for their money and check the connection.

First thing though is connect with a cable and check the results. Test at the router and bypass the router and test from the the ISP gateway. This should either rule them out or point to where the issue is before dealing with the wifi side of things.

 

[Tech9]

Any point in trying a router with more WiFi girth to give out?

Just stop testing your connection with this bufferbloat test. Do you have any real issues with games or streaming?

 

[Crimliar]

Okay, so over the last few weeks I've spent a lot of time setting up an RK3588 system as a cloud game streaming device, and there a really weird issue that may be affecting you!

The games play in a browser window, and if there's any kind of scaling, no matter how good the video is, it'll slow and stutter - even if the display is smaller than the resolution of the stream! This seems to hold true for Geforce Now, XBox Cloud, and Luna!

 

[sfx2000]

When going into Gaming - the network is like the rest of the periperhals - there are things you can control, and things you can't...

On any of your platforms - the root hub of your meshes are going to be the primary end-point with ethernet - wifi either on the host hub, or on the satellites will add latency...

 

[Carnagerover]

Okay, so over the last few weeks I've spent a lot of time setting up an RK3588 system as a cloud game streaming device, and there a really weird issue that may be affecting you!

The games play in a browser window, and if there's any kind of scaling, no matter how good the video is, it'll slow and stutter - even if the display is smaller than the resolution of the stream! This seems to hold true for Geforce Now, XBox Cloud, and Luna!

Do you mean say for example if you don’t have your browser set to 100%? If you’re zoomed in or something like that? Or the OS? I’m not following 100%.

 

[Carnagerover]

I would just focus on an actual AP and not a router that does anything with the traffic. First of all it rules out any wifi issues directly. If it's still not doing what you want then focus on the router it's connected to. If it's still an issue make the ISP work for their money and check the connection.

First thing though is connect with a cable and check the results. Test at the router and bypass the router and test from the the ISP gateway. This should either rule them out or point to where the issue is before dealing with the wifi side of things.

Once I removed the Eero system my latency went back to normal, now that the X75 Pro is installed my latency is the same as when using the ISP modem.

Just stop testing your connection with this bufferbloat test. Do you have any real issues with games or streaming?

Yes basically when playing games through GeForce Now latency is king when using a mouse, the bufferbloat test has been useful to see how much a saturated connection is going to affect my game streaming laptop. Going from 20ms which it is at baseline to >40ms doesn’t feel great. I have plenty of bandwidth heavy devices in the network and although only my laptop can fully saturate he download I was hoping that using something like fq-codel would help with the latency spikes to keep my streaming responsive. This is why I originally went for the Eero but unfortunately it caused more issues than it fixed.

 

[Tech9]

how much a saturated connection is going to affect my game streaming laptop

How often is your connection saturated with normal Internet use?

 

[Carnagerover]

How often is your connection saturated with normal Internet use?

Its random to be honest but it does happen that is for sure, not for huge amounts of time. Steam updates, PS5, Xbox Series X game updates/download and my NAS drive is downloading and random parts of the day and evening depending when the files it is downloading are available. I am actually a little annoyed that there isn't a live bandwidth monitor on the TP-Link so if I'm having issues I can see what the culprit is. My NAS on its own can saturate a gigabit line, I know my connection is a little faster than that so has some overhead.

I have lost connection a couple of times this morning on 6E which hasn't happened before and the latency actually seems a little worse that the 5Ghz, I am just out of line of sight in the next room with a door open. I know 6Ghz isn't the best for going out of line of sight so I will do some testing on 5Ghz.

 

[Crimliar]

On browser resolutions - and it's game dependant!
if the game plays at 1920x1080 then in order to get full performance from cloud (streaming) gameplay, you seem to need to set the full screen (f11) browser to that same resolution to get maximum performance. Any scaling (even just because it's not full screen borderless - or in a window) at all seems to have an effect on performance, way more than I would have expected.
I've not had the RK3588 playing at 4K on Geforce Now, but I'll probably give that a go at some point!
If you've a game that will play at the native resolution of the PC in question give it a go, remembering that you may well need to set that screen resolution once you are in the game as it plays on GeForceNow!
Latency here is not an issue, never really has been even on the laptop, framerates and visual quality were issues that I lived with prior to the new setup - probably a different discussion but GeForce definitely leads the pack in visual quality,

 

[Carnagerover]

On browser resolutions - and it's game dependant!
if the game plays at 1920x1080 then in order to get full performance from cloud (streaming) gameplay, you seem to need to set the full screen (f11) browser to that same resolution to get maximum performance. Any scaling (even just because it's not full screen borderless - or in a window) at all seems to have an effect on performance, way more than I would have expected.
I've not had the RK3588 playing at 4K on Geforce Now, but I'll probably give that a go at some point!
If you've a game that will play at the native resolution of the PC in question give it a go, remembering that you may well need to set that screen resolution once you are in the game as it plays on GeForceNow!
Latency here is not an issue, never really has been even on the laptop, framerates and visual quality were issues that I lived with prior to the new setup - probably a different discussion but GeForce definitely leads the pack in visual quality,

Thanks for the info