Gaming router worth the purchase?

[sjcup10]

Hi everyone! I have recently been considering buying a new router made for gaming. Right now I am using a netgear N-150 that my ISP had provided (comcast). My main usage is online gamine on xbox 360. My xbox is hardwired using the cat5 cables provided by MS and comcast. My roomate has an xbox in his bedroom and is connected by wi-fi. We each have netbooks (wi-fi) we really only use for web browsing, and we each have phones (wi-fi).

To be honest, I dont really appear to be lagging (visually) or having any connection problems in online games. Occasionally I do seem to get some input lag from the controller. In First person shooter games, I always seem to have the problem where I have a guy dead in my sights and am shooting him repeatedly only to have that player kill me easily with what looks like maybe 1 shot. I also seem to die alot after what appears to me, that I have made it easily around a corner. I do run my tv on game mode. It's an LCD with a response time of 8m/s i think.

So my main question is, do you think I would benefit from spending the extra money on a router and replacing the cat5 cable with cat7? What are the better routers for gaming? My tech level is below low, and I'm not sure what I should be looking for in a gaming router. Thanks for all the help.

 

[vshah]

absolutely a waste of money.

 

[sjcup10]

Thanks for the reply. Worth upgrading the cable from cat 5 or is that a waste too?

 

[JackMDS]

If you mean upgrading from existing CAT5e?

Yap, it is a waste of money too.

 

[teh_pwnerer]

a gaming router? What the hell did I just read...

 

[sjcup10]

a gaming router? What the hell did I just read...

calm down buddy, I already said my tech level was below low. I was just wondering if some of those routers like the Asus dark knight and d-links were worth the money

 

[vshah]

the only room i see for improvement would be wiring your friend's xbox instead of wifi. other than that, you could upgrade your internet connection...that's about it. if Fios is available in your area that would probably provide better pings than comcast.

 

[sjcup10]

the only room i see for improvement would be wiring your friend's xbox instead of wifi. other than that, you could upgrade your internet connection...that's about it. if Fios is available in your area that would probably provide better pings than comcast.

I checked on Fios and it's not available in my area yet, but I plan on switching when it is. Ill hardwire my netbook and check my speeds. On wifi my netbook is awful, usually a D grade (hardwired it usually been pretty good). Im guessing that has something to do with my firewall because my phone gets way better speeds. Do people still use pingtest.net?

netbook on comcast wifi with blast- 257ping 130 jitter 2 down 6 up D line quality- pingtest .net

I really only use my netbook for browsing, so hardwired is what I care most about

 

[dawks]

Ping test is pretty basic.

I prefer using a command line, and tracert (since it lets you see the route your packets take to a particular server). Sometimes its not the destination thats the issue, it could just be a router along the way.

Gaming routers are a waste of $$. The best they can do is QoS and optimize for gaming packets, but you can do that manually if you take some time to research it (not to mention the benefit is hardly worth it in most cases).

Changing the cables/wires wont have an impact. It might matter if you were trying to saturdate 10gig ports with massive data transfers...

Your best bet, as stated, have your ISP fix problems (if they have them) or find a better ISP. (From what I know, verizon has stopped rolling out Fios so you may be out of luck on that one).

If pings on the first 5 hops are above say 30ms on a tracert then your ISP may have issues. If its beyond that, theres not much you can do.

tracert 8.8.8.8
tracert 4.2.2.2
tracert microsoft.com
You could try googling for xbox server IP's and trace to them.. see where the highest pings are. (do it on a wired connection with nothing running)

Uploads can slow ping times and cause lag.

 

[ImDonly1]

D-Link's gaming routers are stable, but overpriced and pure marketing. I would not buy one unless it was on sale for a really good price.

They just relabel QoS as a gaming feature, so you can limit download speed or prioritize it to ports/applicaitons. This way you can assign games higher priority and get lower ping in theory when there is lots of traffic going through the router. Any DD-WRT, etc router can do this for a much smaller price.