Wireless gaming router?

[Duke{CLR}]

Last night was the beginning of the end for my current wireless router. I was loosing packets and B ws kicking me. I also can tell whenever my stepdaughter is using the network. I will immediately get lag. When she is not online I have a smooth connection.

I have found this gaming router here. A D-Link DGL-4500.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833127243

It is supposed to use something called GameFuel to help prioritize network traffic. Does anyone here have experience with this or any other gaming router? Can I really put my gaming packets on top of all other network traffic or is it just a scheme?

[Trooper110]

They're probably just using a form of QoS in it. Which a lot of the current router manufacturers include, or that you can get from downloading and installing a 3rd party firmware if one is available. And it doesn't always work as well as advertised. The router may prioritize packets but that doesn't mean that once it hits the outside network that you will receive priority.

[Duke{CLR}]

I assume that when you say outside network that oyu are talking about the network outside my DSL modem. I think my issues are happening on my side does this QoS work at all?

[darth_nevus]

i myself, thanks to my new laptop, have been using wireless for gaming. i'll tell you what. its come a LONG way gaming wise.

first off, i have this:

http://www.netgear.com/Products/Rout...s/WNR854T.aspx

1: off of it, wirelessly, i have run my laptop AND my Wii. my biggest concern initially was that it gets 300Mbps ONLY if ONLY draft-N or N class wireless devices are connected. otherwise, it runs @ 150Mbps if a G, B, or A class device is connected. the Wii is NOT draft-N or N class.

2: the range is killer. i have this thing buried in my basement, in a concrete block room. above it is the wood floor of the first floor. in the opposite corner of the house, i STILL get full bars on my laptop. i have yet to try it outdoors, but i plan on it, just to check the range.

3: the laptop has "Integrated Intel? 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N Wireless Networking", and its running in Draft-N mode. i haven't yet been able to figure out with vista the actual speed like i could with the old a/b/g stuff in XP, but its darn fast.

4: one quirk i have yet to be able to figure out, and have gotten no response from Netgear about yet, is that all my pc's, including the newest one, with a Gig-E port, all wired to it, never break ~575kbps when downloading something. my laptop on the other hand, averages ~750kbps. i have run the 2 side by side, alternating downloads to get pure speed, multiple times, downloading the 1.41 BF2 patch from EA's site, and the laptop is definately faster, so its not necessarily looking at burst speeds. the PC's are Wired, just the lappy is wireless.

5: i have put it to what i call a small test. i ran BF2 on the laptop, my son ran TF2 on my old pc, my youngest surfed the Wii Web, and my wife played backgammon on yahoo all at the same time. oddly, the laptop got priority wirelessly, but none of the other computers experienced connection lag issues.

6: i have 2x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833180053 and 1x http://www.cgs4u.com/ItemDetail.aspx?itemid=1134(i bought this from newegg for 1/2 the price here, but they don't seem to have it anymore) i plan on testing. the usb versions i have tested, and will run at the full speed 300Mbps. they also have great range compared to the previous a/b/g generation. they don't have friendly Vista drivers on the CD, so you must get them from the web first via a wired connection, and then your all set.

7: i have 5Mbps Charter cable internet before you think i have a speed demon of a connection.

8: i now regularly game on my laptop. with the router in question, combined with the built in wireless card, i can honestly say i am VERY surprised over my previous attempts with b/g routers/adaptors. previously, gaming via wireless was hit or miss, but mostly miss. now, i can't even tell. wired or wireless on the laptop, my cpu is the bottleneck, but, i don't get the connection lag i used to with previous gen adaptors.

9: the are ALOT of settings in the router. multiple places to alter wireless settings, so it took a bit to get it up and running. no more than 30 minute sor so. but the slow part, and most annoying part, is that any change that is made and saved, requires ~5 minutes, during which the router cycles itself, and drops all the pc's on it. another thing is that the router detects the pc's on the network first, and needs to do so first. i had issues cycling my switch, fileserver, and router in the correct order, took a bit of time to get a response from Netgear on exactly how it needed to be done. but it works now.

10: most fun feature. the router keeps a log of ALL packets going in and outbound. it tells you which pc sends/recieves the packets. it also tells you whre they are going. its a great tool for monitoring what sites are visited, and by whom, as well as where individual packets are going. it can also email the list to you at a specific interval, assuming your stupid cable provider allows it to. mine doesn't, but thats just charter being a pain in the butt and blocking ports, because the router makes itself look like an email server. charter doesn't like that. it'll also email you if someone attemts to visit a blocked site. this is a great tool if your at work, and a kid goes somewhere they aren't supposed to.

Thats my review. take it as you will, but, my setup works wonders for me.

[DougBob]

Yes obsolutely it works. QoS has been around for a while. I usually use it on my router for giving my voip priority over all other traffic.
On my Linksys I can give a MAC address of a machine/device, a port number of the router's switch or a port of a protocol. Usually it's not that detailed of priotization on home routers like high dollar router's/L3 catalyst, but it's enough it will make a difference.
It may take a little experimentation and just plain playing around to get it the way you want it while you get use to it.
Like Trooper110 kind of touched on, this is only for the traffic on your LAN side. It only controls and is only intended to control whats coming from your individual IPs on the LAN side and which ones the router will let out or in first if other network packets get there at the same point in time.
Try it out and see what you think, since it sounds like your stepdaughter is the main one you want to put QoS on. Try using the MAC address assignment and give her's who ever else a low priority and your machine a high.

Good Luck

[Duke{CLR}]

Thanks for the info Darth. Maybe it's more then just this QoS or GameFuel. it could be that just a fresh new router would help.

[Trooper110]

It can :P I've seen examples where it works pretty well and other places where it does not. You're welcome to give it a whirl although it's not guaranteed to help you.

[BlackArrow]

Duke,

I own that router. Replaced my Linksys N for no other reason than I guess I like toys and this one had "GAMEFUEL" and it is "EXTREME".

I sort of miss my linksys which cost less and was a linksys which i have used for the past decade.

I have seen no noticeable increase in performance in this router over the linksys WRT300-N which costs $50-70 less

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833124068

[Duke{CLR}]

Duke,

I own that router. Replaced my Linksys N for no other reason than I guess I like toys and this one had "GAMEFUEL" and it is "EXTREME".

I sort of miss my linksys which cost less and was a linksys which i have used for the past decade.

I have seen no noticeable increase in performance in this router over the linksys WRT300-N which costs $50-70 less

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833124068

Had you had trouble with other connections prior?

[mapes]

Yes obsolutely it works. QoS has been around for a while. I usually use it on my router for giving my voip priority over all other traffic.

It's important to realize that this is not QOS. What it is is some proprietary packet prioritizing built into the router. So you can only affect how your router treats packets. Real QOS actually inserts flags into the packet that upstream routers use to prioritize packets. Now that said ... the router could have qos as well but, I don't think your ISP will prioritize your packets based on any QOS flags your router puts in.

[BlackArrow]

Had you had trouble with other connections prior?

No. If anything my connections seem a little more sluggish with the Dlink.

[Duke{CLR}]

Hmmm maybe I can call Verizon and demand my packets get some priority.

[Devilguns]

I don't have the Dlink version you listed but I have the DGL 4300. Game fuel works. Check any review anywhere and it'll tell you the same. Go to D-Link's website and down load the PDF manual to read the set up instructions to get a better Idea how it works, at least better than I can explain lol. I've see people complain it doesn't work and thats because they probably don't even know how to log into their router to enable it.

What Mapes said is correct, it doesn't affect packets leaving your home. It all works internally. Basically if some one else in your house decides to down load a 2 gig movie file, your traffic (gaming, whatever) will get priority and you wont lag. At the time of the 4300s release, for the price it was the only router that could do that. I've set up Linksys's since then that can do the same thing. But from my experience Linksys is big time junk.

[Duke{CLR}]

I think I will down load that manual and see whats involved in setting that up. It's new to me so I would hate to pay for something that i would not be able to use.

[darth_nevus]

It's important to realize that this is not QOS. What it is is some proprietary packet prioritizing built into the router. So you can only affect how your router treats packets. Real QOS actually inserts flags into the packet that upstream routers use to prioritize packets. Now that said ... the router could have qos as well but, I don't think your ISP will prioritize your packets based on any QOS flags your router puts in.

i am pretty sure we(you and i) had this discussion a while back, and you ultimately proved via various things that the injected QoS falgs are either ignored or stripped for broadband ISPs, with the exception of thier own VOIP services.

i've seen the nasty side of the VOIP problems caused with Vonage users once broadband isp's started really cracking into it. i think canada is actually investigating one of the cable service providers at the moment for kicking user packets & voip packets to less important than their own Voip solutions.