Best router or switch with gaming features

JohnDHind · 26 Nov 2020 at 15:50

I have Virgin 550Gb download but with their poor Hub 3. I need either a switch or router that provides dynamic gaming facilities, like “Killer Prioritization Engine”, QoS, auto port forwarding etc

My sons play on Xbox and Playstation and are hard wired, so it doesn't need to be a £400 Wifi unit - it could be a £40 managed switch and a bit of software.

Any ideas ?

TIA,
John

ChrisD. · 26 Nov 2020 at 16:12

For wired only there's nothing wrong with the hub. If you're having issues it's more than likely the ISP.

Armageus · 26 Nov 2020 at 16:15

JohnDHind said:
like “Killer Prioritization Engine”, QoS

These will make no difference unless you connection is actually being saturated e.g. by someone downloading (or uploading)

Avalon · 26 Nov 2020 at 21:08

QoS only prioritises traffic, if the traffic isn’t saturating the interface, it’s largely pointless unless something is very wrong and certainly not needed at a switch level. It’s also got zero effect beyond your routers WAN port, two consoles playing games use bugger all bandwidth, one downloading and the other playing something latency sensitive is a different story. Also replace ‘Killer Prioritization Engine’ with ‘Marketing BS for naive people’, that’s all ‘gaming’ claims in networking products are.

pp111 · 27 Nov 2020 at 10:58

Killer prioritization only really works if you a Killer Network interface and since they seem to be disappearing that's unlikely. Personally I think it's a shame because I think a lot of people criticized Killer unfairly. Overall it was a nice little package of hardware and software that simplified matters and helped the average gamer. Anyway, what is it you are trying to sort out? If you want to sort out saturation of the internet ( WAN ) that's a different matter to sorting out the LAN. If your WAN is saturating then personally I think a good bet is either one of the Netgear Gaming routers, which has DumaOS or one of the newer Asus routers like the RT-AX82U. DumaOS is particularly useful for something like an XBox because it offers controls that just aren't available in the XBox itself. DumaOS though tends to be a bit buggy, so minus one point for that! The Asus router is a bargain and it has tons of game related features. One I particularly like is the ability to prioritize all gaming machines on the network in addition to normal QOS. The UI on the Asus though is nothing like as nice as the DumaOS graphical interface, but just as powerful and has more features. I guess the really unusual thing about DumaOS is it's ability to control access to gaming servers according to ping. That's priceless with an XBox. Recently Asus modified their port forwarding to make it really simple. If it is your wired LAN that's saturating then a really good buy is the Netgear Gaming Switch. It's a managed switch, but has features specifically aimed at the home and gaming, allowing you to prioritize traffic according to a number of simple gaming requirements. Nothing an ordinary managed switch can't do, but far easier to understand an implement ( it has gaming presets ).

JohnDHind · 27 Nov 2020 at 13:01

Thanks guys for the answers so far.

The issue I'm trying to solve is that when my son is playing Fortnite on XBox or PC, it starts to lag, picture freezes for a split second or it judders. The problem is not all of the time, so the issue might well be the Fortnite servers, but I don't know if some of the features that pp111 refers to might help the situation - that's why I haven't gone out and spent £300+ on a fancy router.

The home network is Virgin Media (they upgraded me to 650Mb yesterday for free !), and we have a few phones and TV's on the network, Playstation, Alexa devices etc. XBox and PC are on cat6 into the Virgin Hub3.

WJA96 · 27 Nov 2020 at 13:12

@pp111 - I find your post very depressing because it makes people think that there are features that are only available on specific gaming devices.

All the networking protocols are the same for all traffic and it feels to me that it’s better to promote understanding of the effects of the protocols on traffic within games rather than encourage people to buy a ‘black box’ that may or may not actually help just because a marketeer decided to stick a ‘gaming’ label on the box.

JohnDHind · 27 Nov 2020 at 14:01

@WJA96 that's what this thread is for, trying to understand what the gaming features actually do for you and are these features available on a £40 switch/router.

WJA96 · 27 Nov 2020 at 14:17

No, they’re not. And if you think about adding another device between your client and your router it’s only going to slow down the process.

have you done any investigation about whether the issue is at your end or the server end?

Armageus · 27 Nov 2020 at 14:24

JohnDHind said:
@WJA96 that's what this thread is for, trying to understand what the gaming features actually do for you and are these features available on a £40 switch/router.

They are traffic shaping functions that are of some benefit with limited bandwidth connections (such as the 24Mbps FTTC I have, shared between 5 people!) - a 650Mbps connection such as yours has more than sufficient bandwidth to ensure you should not need any traffic shaping.

Simplest thing to test would be to disconnect all other devices except a single pc / xbox, then ensure that there are no background updates going on e.g. Steam games updating, and then try playing a game.

If no lag at that point, then it's likely something in your network utilising bandwidth (e.g. someone torrenting or similar), if you still have lag then try other games - if multiple different games lag then it's an ISP issue, if not then it's a game server issue.

ChrisD. · 27 Nov 2020 at 14:45

WJA96 said:
have you done any investigation about whether the issue is at your end or the server end?

I can almost guarantee it's a Virgin Media issue.

JohnDHind · 27 Nov 2020 at 16:52

@ChrisD. Do you think the Virgin Media Hub or Virgin Media backbone that I'm connecting to ?

I do want to buy something to replace the Hub3 and just use it as the modem...

MagicBoy · 27 Nov 2020 at 16:59

Couple of things :
No such thing as a gaming switch, it's all just marketing bulls**t. Anything standards compliant will be fine. QoS is of little help unless the link is saturated, won't magically fix an external connection with bad latency and/or packet loss.
Really fast internet won't fix a bad quality connection. Gets you faster downloads if the services you connect to can service high bandwidth, that's it.

If you've got issues I'd be talking to Virgin, I can pretty much guarantee it's not within your local network if wired.

pp111 · 27 Nov 2020 at 17:04

WJA96 said:
@pp111 - I find your post very depressing because it makes people think that there are features that are only available on specific gaming devices.

I don't think it does, but just to clarify - you can mostly do the same with any router or switch. I say mostly because there are some unique features of gaming devices. But there is a huge difference in the way the features are presented. In the Asus router I mentioned, for example, if you go in to port forwarding it literally has pictures of the games and you just click on the one you want to establish the configuration. The DumaOS router is a very graphical interface and is much more friendly to gamers than just a bland sheet of data. It's like the difference between Windows and DOS. I mean if you fully understand how it all works s then you don't need a gaming device but if you don't understand routers and switches then simple click configuration is a blessing. Not everyone understands the fine points of a router and the gaming routers are really at aimed at those people. Another example is the Asus router allows you to specify gaming devices. You just click on the name of the device and it is given priority from that point on - whether it is wired or wireless. The DumaOS show the network tree as a diagram and you can allocate bandwith to each one by the click of a button. It's not that you can't do this with other routers, it's that it's so simple with gaming specific routers.

WJA96 said:
No, they’re not. And if you think about adding another device between your client and your router it’s only going to slow down the process.

have you done any investigation about whether the issue is at your end or the server end?

Not really. For example, the Negtear Gaming Switch adds a delay of about 0.05ms ( +- depending on the game ).[/QUOTE]

Armageus · 27 Nov 2020 at 17:16

pp111 said:
In the Asus router I mentioned, for example, if you go in to port forwarding it literally has pictures of the games and you just click on the one you want to establish the configuration.

Why do you need to forward ports in this day and age?

MagicBoy · 27 Nov 2020 at 17:24

Armageus said:
Why do you need to forward ports in this day and age?

Yep. Last time I had to do that was with an Xbox 360 and the original Sky router about 12 years ago. uPNP just works on anything from the last decade.

MagicBoy · 27 Nov 2020 at 17:34

pp111 said:
Killer prioritization only really works if you a Killer Network interface and since they seem to be disappearing that's unlikely. Personally I think it's a shame because I think a lot of people criticized Killer unfairly. Overall it was a nice little package of hardware and software that simplified matters and helped the average gamer. Anyway, what is it you are trying to sort out? If you want to sort out saturation of the internet ( WAN ) that's a different matter to sorting out the LAN. If your WAN is saturating then personally I think a good bet is either one of the Netgear Gaming routers, which has DumaOS or one of the newer Asus routers like the RT-AX82U. DumaOS is particularly useful for something like an XBox because it offers controls that just aren't available in the XBox itself. DumaOS though tends to be a bit buggy, so minus one point for that! The Asus router is a bargain and it has tons of game related features. One I particularly like is the ability to prioritize all gaming machines on the network in addition to normal QOS. The UI on the Asus though is nothing like as nice as the DumaOS graphical interface, but just as powerful and has more features. I guess the really unusual thing about DumaOS is it's ability to control access to gaming servers according to ping. That's priceless with an XBox. Recently Asus modified their port forwarding to make it really simple. If it is your wired LAN that's saturating then a really good buy is the Netgear Gaming Switch. It's a managed switch, but has features specifically aimed at the home and gaming, allowing you to prioritize traffic according to a number of simple gaming requirements. Nothing an ordinary managed switch can't do, but far easier to understand an implement ( it has gaming presets ).

It's not unknown for "gaming" routers and the like that are trying to be clever to actually cause more problems. An eSports title I play just doesn't work with hilariously expensive Netgear routers running an out of the box config. It's a problem of Netgear's own making. After getting a load of blowback Netgear started trying to troubleshoot the issues with the developer using dev firmware with extra logging and got nowhere quick. Netgear then cut off communication.

Turn off the Netgear special sauce QoS and the problems disappear.

pp111 · 27 Nov 2020 at 19:17

MagicBoy said:
It's not unknown for "gaming" routers and the like that are trying to be clever to actually cause more problems. An eSports title I play just doesn't work with hilariously expensive Netgear routers running an out of the box config. It's a problem of Netgear's own making. After getting a load of blowback Netgear started trying to troubleshoot the issues with the developer using dev firmware with extra logging and got nowhere quick. Netgear then cut off communication.

Turn off the Netgear special sauce QoS and the problems disappear.

The Netgear + DumaOS are not supported by Netgear, they are supported by DumaOS which is a different company. But really you can't criticize all gaming routers because one has a bug. I mean I get it, to someone who understands how it all works, a normal router or switch is the same or even better as a gaming router, but I do think there are a lot of people who want simplicity and a pretty graphical interface! Live and let live, I say.

ChrisD. · 27 Nov 2020 at 19:33

JohnDHind said:
@ChrisD. Do you think the Virgin Media Hub or Virgin Media backbone that I'm connecting to ?

I do want to buy something to replace the Hub3 and just use it as the modem...

It’ll be their network. Get a broadband quality graph on the go.

MagicBoy · 27 Nov 2020 at 19:46

pp111 said:
The Netgear + DumaOS are not supported by Netgear, they are supported by DumaOS which is a different company. But really you can't criticize all gaming routers because one has a bug. I mean I get it, to someone who understands how it all works, a normal router or switch is the same or even better as a gaming router, but I do think there are a lot of people who want simplicity and a pretty graphical interface! Live and let live, I say.

That was just one specific example. Seem to recall similar issues with the earlier Gaming NICs going back years. I've spent too many years dealing with Enterprise IT kit to buy into the marketing bull****.