Problem with newly aquired N66U

[akirru]

Hi

I'm on the latest stable merlin firmware for this router. I have been having lag spikes every so often whilst gaming online. My ping just jumps. I'm currently using a cat5e wired connection. Upnp is off and Nat hardware accel is on. Also I dont use any qos but the firewall is on. I noticed that iphones and ipads might be contributing to the spike when they connect to the network.

Thanks
Andrew

 

[L&LD]

What actual firmware version are you talking about?

Did you do a reset to factory defaults as suggested below?

http://www.snbforums.com/threads/no...l-and-manual-configuration.27115/#post-205573

 

[wh7qq]

It is possible that the activity of the iPhones/Pads is causing the problem...does the ping time revert to normal in short order? Depending also on your ISP's pipe, there is only so much throughput available from the N66U. Your pings may catch it handling the iPhone traffic. Try turning them off for a while.

 

[akirru]

The firmware used is 380.57 (Merlin)

I did a factory reset during the install process. I reset my router and a lot of the devices are now connecting through one of my access points (tp-link 841n). That might take some of the load away from the n66? I can't really disable the other devices per se. I run a small business and around 6-7 people access my internet with several devices.

Andy

 

[Nullity]

Wireless load is most likely not the bottle-neck that is causing lag.

The load on your internet connection is most likely the problem.

 

[Fraoch]

Try enabling QoS.

 

[Klueless]

So your hypothesis is business users are compromising your gaming? Might it also be said that your gaming is compromising business : -)

I'm just kinda curious if you resolved your problem? There's a lot of talent on this forum (not me) if you'd just give them a little more info to go on. Like what is your subscribed Internet service rate up and down? What do your Internet speed tests show when things are good? And when they're not so good?

You mention Ping. What are you seeing for ping times (good and bad)?

You've some neat tools available on your Asus (and even more so with RMerlin). What are you seeing under Traffic Monitor? What do you see when it's just you and your gaming? What do you see when those pesky business users are on?

What devices are connected when your gaming is going well? What devices are connected when gaming is not going so well?

Collect a little data and the problem might make itself known to you. Share the data and someone here is likely to point you in the right direction.

For example here at work we were having numerous problems, outages and we had no clue. Replaced our old router with an Asus N66U. Still had problems but with the Asus Traffic Monitor we could see we had at least two different types of problems.

1. Lots of traffic coupled with horrible Internet performance.
2. Very little traffic with even worse Internet performance.

For problem #2 we tried something called PingPlotter. It's a tool that graphs an automated series of pings and tracerts. From it we learned that our ISP likely had a problem with their router (which they fixed). We also learned we had a couple problems with our local network (which we fixed).

For problem #1 we learned we had some client issues (online gaming, streaming video, and the new iPhone thing). We solved those with QoS. We can still observe those things but with QoS implemented our users don't ... perception is everything.

Good luck and do keep us posted.

 

[akirru]

Klueless, thanks so much for you well thought out reply And of course taking the time to read about my plight!

I have done as you mentioned and watched the logs available in the wonderful merlin firmware. I decided as others have also mentioned to enable QOS. It was something that I had used in the past, but my old router had trouble keeping up with the amount of traffic. The new asus n66 seems to do it wonderfully. I just set it to auto and added my own computer with more priority and its completely smooth now.

Andy

 

[Klueless]

Thank you Sir, it's great to hear that all is well! (We bought our Asus back in October and have been very happy with it also.)