Home Router Issue

[CreganTur]

For my house I have Road Runner for my broadband and have connected the modem to a Linksys e1200 wireless router.

I run a physical cable back to my desktop which is where I'm experiencing a number of issues when I game with my friends. I'll get dropped calls with Skype, serious lag and connection issues with the games we play (Heroes of the Storm, Diablo 3, Civilization V).

I've connected the modem directly to the computer and do not have these issues, so the problem seems to be isolated to the router.

Firmware is updated to latest. I have opened ports for the applications I use. It peak times I get ~15-16 mbps download and ~1.5 mbps upload speeds.

Any suggestions on how to improve my router's performance to mitigate my gaming troubles? I'm not the best at networking so any advice could be helpful.

 

[Mopower]

I assume 15Mbps down and 1.5 up is normal for the speed you are paying for?

What other devices do you have connected to your router? Maybe one of them is using bandwidth and causing latency with the connection. Especially with that slow of upload speed. Even a cell phone uploading something to "the cloud" could make your connection unusable. I had a customer with the same exact problem and it was his ADT security cameras he installed in the house. They were motion controlled and any time there was movement they would start uploading video to ADT. Making his ping times go from 30ms to in the hundreds. Stuff like that can cause connection issues.

Try pinging google from cmd using the command "ping www.google.com -t" If you have DSL it should be in the 40 to 60ms range at idle. Try it with your pc connected directly to the modem to get a baseline. And then try it when you are connected to the router. If the pings times go up into the hundreds then something is maxing out your connection. Eliminate devices until the problem goes away. Then reconnect devices until the problem returns so you can narrow it down.

If you don't have anything connected to the router except your PC try hard resetting the router to factory defaults. If that doesn't fix it then there might be something wrong with the router. Not much else you can do. Maybe load another firmware on it.

 

[Cmustang87]

/snip
Try pinging google from cmd using the command "ping www.google.com -t"

Also with this command, let it run for 10 or so minutes and then press CTRL+C to cancel it. See if your router is dropping any packets vs. directly connected to modem.

 

[Dead Parrot]

Your ISP speed is fine if your ping times are normally ok. I used to have 6 people sitting around a table playing GW1 or World of Tanks on a 3m down/ 512k up DSL connection and we would normally get pings of less then 100.

What you need to eliminate is anything on any device in your network that does automatic updates or call ins. Adobe Download Manager, Logitech Update service, Nvida Experience(or whatever they call it now), Steam client, Folding clients, and especially Windows Updates are some suspects. During the above gaming sessions, sometime our pings would go to 999. Turned out it was yet another PC doing folding that was calling folding central for more work units. Limiting that folding program to 10% bandwidth fixed the issue.

Things to check with your router: 1 - NIC cables. They do go bad. Pets, kids, feet and time take their toll. 2 - The wall wart. Most are lovingly crafted from 15 cents of Chinese parts. If yours has drifted out of spec, it can cause your router to misbehave. 3 - The router itself may be near EOL. It happens.

 

[Mopower]

If you have any gaming clients like Steam, Origin etc do you leave them on all the time or only start them when you are going to play a game? If you only start them when you are going to play they are probably updating and can max out your connection. Make sure they aren't updating installed games or the client itself when you are experiencing problems.