Will purchasing a router improve my gaming situation?

[arredondo]

Good morning,

With AT&T UVerse, they lease to me a Pace 5268AC modem, to which I connect my PS4 and PC (ethernet cables) and various wifi devices (mainly family iPhones). I pay for the 45d/5u plan (fastest in my area), and when running the program at SpeedTest.net the results are usually around 50d/5u with a VERY consistent ping of 18.

I would love to maximize my ping in games on the PS4 and PC, so I usually have most things turned off or not active while I am gaming. Can I improve it more? As it turns out, the modem I have does NOT offer QoS settings so I can have, say, my PS4 prioritize online activity over the PC and other devices. That is what I want to focus on.

I hear if I buy a router and connect it in between my modem and the other stuff, it is possible to take advantage of its QoS abilities... is this true? If so, do you think the improvement would be worth the investment? If I can reduce the average ping by +5, it would be worth it to me I think. Lastly, I've never had a setup like this, so how would I connect everything. Is it a matter of connecting the wall cable--->router--->modem--->devices or something more involved?

Thank you!

 

[JackMDS]

Your Pace 5268AC is a Modem Router.

Usually to get a Chance improving the Network the Modem/Router has to be configured as a Modem only and then add your own fancy Wirless Router.

I am not familiar with the Pace 5268AC per-se. Search and see if it can be turned into a Modem only.

Example - https://www.att.com/esupport/article.html#!/dsl-high-speed/KM1044640

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm really not so sure that adding an additional router / packet processing device in the middle, is going to substantially reduce your ping times.

If your ping is 18, that may be due to your line modulation, and modem, rather than anything else. You are on VDSL, correct?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Short answer: no.

Long answer: ping to speedtest is irrelevant - you want to test your ping to the game servers.

For instance, say the server is www.google.com. If you "tracert www.google.com" on a windows machine, you will get a list of routers in between your system and the destination. The latency between hops 1 and 2 (which should be your router and your ISP) is the only thing your router will have any effect on.

In my case, I have ~25ms ping to www.google.com, and the delay between my router and my ISP's gateway is ~8ms of that. So even if I had a fancy router, I probably wouldn't be able to save much there. And I definitely don't control all the stuff between my ISP's gateway and www.google.com, so any delays there are out of my hands.

 

[arredondo]

Please note that I'm not saying a router in and of itself will improve my ping times. It's just that I read that setting up QoS on the hardware will make things better, and unfortunately, my modem from AT&T doesn't have QoS settings.

So if I put a router in the middle of the setup, I can theoretically set up the QoS and see and improvement. At least, that's the theory I'm asking about here.

 

[VirtualLarry]

QoS is complicated, and not a panacea. You can do egress QoS with a home router, but NOT ingress QoS. At least, not until it's supported by your ISP and the internet as a whole, which, most likely, will be never.

So, basically, you can QoS your upstream, if you have limited upstream, to be more "fair" to certain applications or ports / services / local IPs or MACs, but unless you're hitting your upstream limit, it's pointless, and it effectively limits your max upstream to some number lower than the physical media.

Likewise, the only solution for incoming QoS, is getting a faster internet connection / local pipe. Sorry to say.

Edit: Also, QoS on a home router, generally overall slows things down, as it has to use a software NAT / routing path, and should be avoided, if absolute connection performance is your goal.

 

[JackMDS]

QoS or Not, adding a second Router in the Middle of the curent system would make everything worse Not Better.

You can get the best wheel in the world, putting it as 5th wheel in your car would not make the car running better. --.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Please note that I'm not saying a router in and of itself will improve my ping times. It's just that I read that setting up QoS on the hardware will make things better, and unfortunately, my modem from AT&T doesn't have QoS settings.

So if I put a router in the middle of the setup, I can theoretically set up the QoS and see and improvement. At least, that's the theory I'm asking about here.

It would only help if your current connection is congested, such that data is getting lost or delayed. (Prioritization of queue traffic only helps if the queue is not empty, and there's stuff to prioritize. Otherwise everything just goes immediately.)

Generally speaking the only traffic a home user will see/generate that causes the sorts of problems, that QoS can solve, is multiple HD video streams, or BitTorrent.

 

[Ketchup]

Are you sure cable internet isn't available?

 

[spikespiegal]

ISP supplied routers tend to be garbage and I can tell stories about Comcast business gateways running out of DHCP addresses and other nonsense that can fill up pages of blogs. However, even the really crappy gear can typically handle one or two connections at time without much problem. Where lightweight routers run into problems is running out of resources when it comes to handling multiple streams to clients at the same time. This is where your $90 Ubiquiti Edge router and saucer can magically make a small business or large household seem like you got an internet upgrade ISP supplied junk. So, my answer here is 'maybe', but depends on the traffic load. QoS isn't meaningful unless there's actual traffic to manage, and in this case there isn't anything to traffic shape that I can tell and improve thing. Different issue if you have a sibling you want to throttle torrent streams or uploads. Same with wifi.....unless congested or clients are at the edge of the range I rarely see them induce more than 1-2ms latency. More often it's the underpowered client devices causing issues.

 

[dawks]

In a home setup, with one router, QoS will only help balance the traffic passing through that router. So it will only benefit you if you have competing traffic transiting through the router (ie streaming video, uploads, downloads etc). You can set a priority on gaming packets at the expense of other services. Any QoS settings on your equipment are ignored by the network beyond.
That being said, there are other features standalone routers provide that can give you more control over your network. As to improving ping times? unlikely by much unless you're currently experiencing buffer bloat, or the router you have now is abnormally slow. You can sometimes turn off the router features of the modem/router from the ISP and then just use your own router, which is the best option for simplicity.

 

[p00rhyan]

I would love to maximize my ping in games on the PS4 and PC, so I usually have most things turned off or not active while I am gaming. Can I improve it more? As it turns out, the modem I have does NOT offer QoS settings so I can have, say, my PS4 prioritize online activity over the PC and other devices. That is what I want to focus on.

Having a router with QoS will definitely help you prioritize Internet allocation. However, if you are not using any other services while gaming, is it really necessary to add one router in between you and modem?
https://www.corenetworkz.com/2018/01/setup-linksys-wap300n-wireless-access.html

You can use the router cascading technique if you want.
https://www.corenetworkz.com/2008/02/router-to-router-cascading-simple-guide.html