Replacing router, have some question before I do!

[Insomnia_R]

Hi people,

I know there are people here who know alot about routers. I was wondering whether you guys could help me out here. I have an router (wndr3800 by netgear) which is almost 3-4 years old. I was looking to replace it because it does disconnect on wi-fi sometimes (2-3 times a day when on laptop), but that's not what the question is really about. I was wondering whether I would also see difference in gaming when I buy a new router (WIRED performance on the PS4, since I always game with wired connections) such as the Netgear Nighthawk R7000 or the Asus RT-AC68U. I am running fiber internet connection currently. Does a router have impact on latency/ping times or would I not see much difference with the router I have currently, when looking at wired performance in online gaming. Thank you for reading and helping me out.

Greetings,

Insomnia

 

[thiggins]

With an Ethernet connection, latency is largely determined by your ISP connection, not the router.

 

[stig]

With an Ethernet connection, latency is largely determined by your ISP connection, not the router.

Well that's true until you have congestion (are you familiar with the buffer bloat project). A good test is to start a continuous ping through the router to a nearby host and watch the latency #s, then while the ping is still going do a large long download. Often you'll see latency go from a steady sub 10ms to 200-3500ms. We've been testing fq_codel and seen on connection less than 100Mbit that it will significantly reduce the buffer bloat latency.

 

[stevech]

Well that's true until you have congestion (are you familiar with the buffer bloat project). A good test is to start a continuous ping through the router to a nearby host and watch the latency #s, then while the ping is still going do a large long download. Often you'll see latency go from a steady sub 10ms to 200-3500ms. We've been testing fq_codel and seen on connection less than 100Mbit that it will significantly reduce the buffer bloat latency.

pinging a nearby host has the problem of the ISP and its contractors' routing goodness.

If I suspect my WiFi, I ping the router/gateway IP.
If I suspect my (cable modem) ISP provider, I do a tracert to find the first pingable switch/router on the route. Then ping that. This is testing, mostly, in my case, the goodness of the ISP's cable modem DOCSIS system, bandwidth management, etc.

Going to the next host with pings gets flaky in terms of who's at fault. I often ping 4.2.2.2 or 8.8.8.8 as they are very consistent (these are big DNS service host sites).

Better than ping, is the shareware (that will run forever after a nag, as free) - pingPlotter which draws graphs, logs results