QoS Gaming Router Advice

DavieJG

DavieJG

DavieJG

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Joined
24 Sep 2009
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1,080
Hi All,

Recently my online gaming experience has taken a downturn as household members are streaming/browsing etc more and more.

I'd like to replace the standard ISP router with my own that has easy to use and effective QoS capabilities. My gaming machine is hard-wired whereas most other devices on the network are wireless.

I've heard very good things about the Netgear Nighthawks, for example, but they are also quite expensive. I've also heard very good things about some of the custom firmwares, DD-wrt, tomato, open-wrt, merlin etc.

Is there a good mid-range router that can achieve everything i want off-the-shelf or is there a device that really stands out in combination with a particular custom firmware?

If anyone has any experience in this area I would greatly appreciate your input.

Cheers.
 
I know on Asus routers you can set a specific IP as higher priority than everything else.

If your looking for the cheapest solution then go onto dd-wrt website and see what low - mid range routers support it.

DD-WRT performance is amazing, a low-mid range router gets transformed into a supercomputer it's so much more efficient I have found.

Their own forums are the best place to start.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
I know on Asus routers you can set a specific IP as higher priority than everything else.

If your looking for the cheapest solution then go onto dd-wrt website and see what low - mid range routers support it.

DD-WRT performance is amazing, a low-mid range router gets transformed into a supercomputer it's so much more efficient I have found.

Their own forums are the best place to start.
Click to expand...

I'm not necessarily looking for the cheapest option. Rather I don't want to overspend if I won't gain anything extra. TBH I'd rather just copy the setup of someone that has tried and tested something for a while.
 
DavieJG said:
I'm not necessarily looking for the cheapest option. Rather I don't want to overspend if I won't gain anything extra. TBH I'd rather just copy the setup of someone that has tried and tested something for a while.
Click to expand...

Well a lot of people on here have owned and run asus routers so that is your off the shelf option.

As for specific model whatever you can afford.

As for custom firmware options anything that runs dd-wrt will also be good but the more powerful it is the better. I stopped using a flagship belkin router for a free d-link router that i had flashed with dd-wrt. As long as it runs dd-wrt it doesn't matter and there are hundreds of routers that can run it which is why all you need to do is check their forums.

I have run both asus and dd-wrt and i prefer dd-wrt as it's just so much smoother.

D-Link DIR-615 is the one I used but it's old now better off with something more modern.
 
I never managed to get QOS to work reliably on any consumer router that I've had, the last being an ASUS AC66U with Merlin firmware. Since I upgraded to pfSense the QOS has been excellent, it just works.
 
pfsense is router/firewall software which runs on a PC. Basically you would buy yourself a mini PC and install pfsense on it to use as a router. In my case I'm running it as a Virtual Machine.
 
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Add more network cards. I run a mini PC with a £10 USB3 to gigabit Ethernet adapter as well as the one built in and pfSense.

To mimick a typical dedicated router you need two Ethernet connections (1 for LAN and 1 for WAN) and then a switch connected to the LAN side for however many devices you need to be wired to it. My LAN side goes into a 16 port switch which has a dozen devices and two access points for Wifi to be delivered round the house.

Add more ethernet sockets and you can have multiple WANs and segmented networks and all sorts that normally requires a really high end router.
 
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As above. In my case I run pfsense as a VM using a dual Intel NIC PCIe card. 1 connection on the card goes to my VM superhub in modem mode. On the LAN side I have a 24 port TP-Link managed switch.
 
QOS runs perfect on my Asus RT-AC87U, can set priority to gaming machines etc and even limit bandwidth on individual devices or for streaming etc. very easy to setup and just works. early firmware was flaky but recent ones have been spot on. also they now have a brilliant andriod and ios app to control all the QOS and monitor live bandwidth etc. i have about 14 devices and playstations and gaming pc's take priority, streaming 4k netflix on two devices used to kill online gaming but with QOS its perfect and does not affect the netflix streams at all.
 
I run a netgear AC1750 with tomato and its been great, the tomato QOS has been great. I got the AC1750 as it was a great midrange router with good throughput and great range, everything on my network is wireless except for my NAS.

as your PC is already wired in then you could get an even cheaper router, throw tomato or dd-wrt on it and get the QOS options. A more expensive router will only benefit the wireless devices, even then the throughput on wireless will be throttled by your slowest wireless device anyway.
 
Well QoS might not even help depending on what's causing the issue. If they're maxing out the download on your line having QoS on your router isn't going to do anything because you have no control over the inbound traffic.
 
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