help with problem ( xboxs hogging whole internet)

[bigjonnyauk]

hi guys

im on sky broadband with 80 down and 20 up which has quite a few devices connected which normally work fine .

the problem arises is i have a xbox one x and so do my 2 lads ,i also have my home pc which i use to download files for work and stuff .

the minute one of us downloads something (mainly xbox) it hogs everything and basically says no one else can do anything ! ie i downloaded red dead 2 today and while it was downloading my lad could not even watch netflix on his xbox because of buffering .

this is starting to happen quite regular and i wondered if there is a way of assigning each xbox to only use a certain amount of the bandwidth ?

ive read of routers with qos would these work

set up is
my xbox -hard wired into router
my pc - connected wifi 2.4 ghz channel
lads 1 xbox --powerline adapter
lads 2 xbox -- powerline adapter

any help would be appriciated

 

[BigT]

Do you have a way of logging into your router and seeing real time traffic analysis?

Most of the time I see this behaviour it is actually the upstream bandwidth saturated because someone is torrenting. Check if your upstream is saturated when you see the symptomns. It sounds like that isn't the problem though if you're seeing it when you start a download.

Whether it is or isn't the potential solutions are the same.

Traditional way is to use Quality of Service (QoS) on your router as you have read to manage the priority of traffic. We'd need to know your router to advise if it can do it. To be honest, if upstream saturation isn't the problem most routers should be coping just fine on default settings in my experience, which is why I asked the question above.

Another way I've used in the past, which may also be useful to solve another problem if your lads are on powerline because of poor wifi, is to turn off wifi on your router and install an Access Point somewhere better that can rate limit devices connected to certain SSIDs. So for example I have a guest SSID on my access point and a main one. Depending on which you connect to you get either unlimited bandwidth or capped at 2/2 (through use of something called VLANs) The principle of VLANs and rate limiting them can apply to switches and routers as well so again knowing your router may reveal that you can throttle the different devices without investing in anything else to solve your problem.

 

[bigjonnyauk]

I just have the sky hub router ,i can log into it but how would i see traffic management .

Nobody uses torrents at all here,

No one else uses internet,anyone comes then they can use their data if they wanna sit on their phones and be ignorant lol.

I've got the devices listed on network

Then ive split the 2.4 and 5ghz channels so the sky hd boxes and 2 tablets use that.

The 2.4 band has all our phones connected to it

Nothing else connects really

 

[sja360]

I don't think the Xbox itself has an option to limit speeds sadly, its something quite basic that should be added.
I'd recommend not downloading games during peak times during the day, maybe download them overnight if you can. We get away with me on the Xbox and the missus on Netflix but yeah I think if there was another user we'd struggle.

 

[bigjonnyauk]

I don't think the Xbox itself has an option to limit speeds sadly, its something quite basic that should be added.
I'd recommend not downloading games during peak times during the day, maybe download them overnight if you can. We get away with me on the Xbox and the missus on Netflix but yeah I think if there was another user we'd struggle.

Yeah just normal playing is fine ,its the minute one of us downloads a game or update ...bam everything else comes to a halt

 

[Avalon]

That doesn’t make much sense, I can saturate my downlink all day long and it’s not an issue, saturate the uplink and you get exactly the symptoms you describe.

Log into the sky router and check the actual sync speed, you may pay for up to 80/20, but you may not be getting that. If for example your son is watching a 25mbit 4K stream and you are downloading, you’d each get roughly half the available speed all things being equal, if you get over 50Mbit, that’s fine, if you only get 40Mbit, it’s going to result in buffering.

 

[bigjonnyauk]

That doesn’t make much sense, I can saturate my downlink all day long and it’s not an issue, saturate the uplink and you get exactly the symptoms you describe.

Log into the sky router and check the actual sync speed, you may pay for up to 80/20, but you may not be getting that. If for example your son is watching a 25mbit 4K stream and you are downloading, you’d each get roughly half the available speed all things being equal, if you get over 50Mbit, that’s fine, if you only get 40Mbit, it’s going to result in buffering.

Modem

Modem StatusConnected
Traffic TypeTM
Line Rate - Upstream (Kbps):20000
Line Rate - Downstream (Kbps):74000

Broadband Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed (Kbps) 74000 20000
Line Attenuation (dB) DS1:11.2 DS2:19.3 DS3:27.4 US0:8.6 US1:15.4 US2:20.3
Noise Margin (dB) DS1:7.4 DS2:7.5 DS3:7.7 US0:8.2 US1:8.4 US2:8.4

downloading i max out at 73 meg when testing as i only live 300 yards from exchange and my wires come right from there according to engineer and not all round town

ive read across the net that xbox is a munch machine

if i watch netflix on my tv and my lad watches on xbox in his room while the other lad watches sky sports on his xbox and the wife watches her silly youtube vids on her phone all works ok lol

but start to download a game and goodnight

 

[Avalon]

OK, technically what you describe doesn’t make a lot of sense, I don’t doubt what you’re saying, but something is missing or we’re missing something from the information provided. Have you looked at the sync speed on the powerline adapters at all? Also did you follow the instructions for them and avoid where possible spur sockets and things like extensions and surge suppression? In theory (and we’re well into long shot territory here) if they were syncing really, really slowly, you could produce buffering as you describe when the shared bandwidth on the powerline network capacity c(r)aps out.

Ignoring that for a moment, as the stats above point to you having a reasonable sync speed combined with the Sky router being devoid of any meaningful stats other than sync, I’d suggest replacing the Sky router with something that has basic QoS and reporting. An old OpenReach model (HG612 or ECI) plus something that can run the likes of DDWRT/Tomato/OpenWRT or even at a push (and I hate saying it) an old ASUS router with Merlin support would give you local QoS and more importantly the tools to be able to identify what the connection is doing.

 

[bigjonnyauk]

OK, technically what you describe doesn’t make a lot of sense, I don’t doubt what you’re saying, but something is missing or we’re missing something from the information provided. Have you looked at the sync speed on the powerline adapters at all? Also did you follow the instructions for them and avoid where possible spur sockets and things like extensions and surge suppression? In theory (and we’re well into long shot territory here) if they were syncing really, really slowly, you could produce buffering as you describe when the shared bandwidth on the powerline network capacity c(r)aps out.

Ignoring that for a moment, as the stats above point to you having a reasonable sync speed combined with the Sky router being devoid of any meaningful stats other than sync, I’d suggest replacing the Sky router with something that has basic QoS and reporting. An old OpenReach model (HG612 or ECI) plus something that can run the likes of DDWRT/Tomato/OpenWRT or even at a push (and I hate saying it) an old ASUS router with Merlin support would give you local QoS and more importantly the tools to be able to identify what the connection is doing.

sorry for late reply as been working

ive checked all homeplugs and they are fine speed wise and sync by the looks of it , i have even disconnected all homeplugs and just left my xbox wired on with my pc conected by wifi and my lads tv connected to 5ghz wifi . and thats it .

playing everything is fine no problems and then i downloaded a game on xbox and it hogs the whole lot and lads getting buffering on tv. i have searched the internet and seems this is quite a common problem with the xbox as it wont do it when i download something on my pc , its only xbox

 

[Avalon]

Again, all I can suggest is swapping to more capable networking hardware that will allow you to see what’s going on and manage it accordingly.

 

[timmy85]

I get exactly this as well, where my xbox one saturates my download (especislly when utomatically downloading updates etc when in standby mode).

My solution has been to send all network traffic through an asus router, which has bandwidth limiting on per device.

It works and solves the issue, but is an additional cost to purchase the device and more wires to have it all plugged in somewhere!

 

[DragonQ]

This is definitely an annoying problem. QoS is meant to solve this problem but I've yet to see an implementation that actually works. Gaming, calls, video conferencing, and streaming should always have priority over uploads and downloads.on my router doesn't handle this that well.

I get exactly this as well, where my xbox one saturates my download (especislly when utomatically downloading updates etc when in standby mode).

My solution has been to send all network traffic through an asus router, which has bandwidth limiting on per device.

It works and solves the issue, but is an additional cost to purchase the device and more wires to have it all plugged in somewhere!

Mine also lets me set minimum or maximum bandwidth for each device but it's useless because if I set something to have a 10 Mb/s minimum, all the other devices can never use more than 70 Mb/s. I want my desktop PC to be able to download at full speed if nothing else is using the internet bandwidth, I don't want it permanently crippled.

It'd be great if there was a router where you could say "if device X requests bandwidth, make sure it has at least Y Mb/s, otherwise don't limit other devices", or even a more crude "traffic on device X has priority over traffic on device Y".

 

[Avalon]

This is definitely an annoying problem. QoS is meant to solve this problem but I've yet to see an implementation that actually works. Gaming, calls, video conferencing, and streaming should always have priority over uploads and downloads.on my router doesn't handle this that well.


Mine also lets me set minimum or maximum bandwidth for each device but it's useless because if I set something to have a 10 Mb/s minimum, all the other devices can never use more than 70 Mb/s. I want my desktop PC to be able to download at full speed if nothing else is using the internet bandwidth, I don't want it permanently crippled.

It'd be great if there was a router where you could say "if device X requests bandwidth, make sure it has at least Y Mb/s, otherwise don't limit other devices", or even a more crude "traffic on device X has priority over traffic on device Y".

If you guarantee bandwidth, it does exactly that and reserves xMbit. In this scenario I suspect it’s still an upload saturation problem, as it’s about the most obvious explanation without additional info. It’s easier to limit the upload of the individual device, that way 100% of bandwidth is available to everything else. Even Merlin firmwares have traditional/adaptive SFQ, codel and fq_codel, though the FreshJR take on things is quite popular as it takes the adaptive options to a much more usable level. DDWRT has reasonable QoS by either traffic type or client based on mac.