AC68U AND XBOX LIVE DNS SERVER

[MarkyPancake]

I've always used UPnP with the 360 and now X1 and PS4 and have never had any issues with lag because of it.

 

[XSXS]

Jayboy,

Interesting, I lag more often than I would like sometimes in my favor, most of the time not. Anyway I will turn off PF and see how it perform.

What do you think is the best FW out for gaming?

 

[madmac]

did you guys ever turn on DNS filtering in router to filter away porn and malicious sites? Will that affect your connection to xbox live?

 

[MarkyPancake]

My current set up is:

Virgin Media Superhub 2 set to modem mode.

RT-N66U with Merlin firmware as router, UPnP enabled, gets DNS from ISP.

360, X1 and PS4 wired via HomePlug, each with an IP assigned at the router and auto DNS set on the device.

All connect to their respective online service with an Open NAT. Same when wireless.

 

[jayboyyyy]

Jayboy,

Interesting, I lag more often than I would like sometimes in my favor, most of the time not. Anyway I will turn off PF and see how it perform.

What do you think is the best FW out for gaming?

I couldn't tell you that. I know that the first two releases were not as good as the later releases. I have noticed a substantial difference between releases after the last two. But i have been pretty busy so I haven't logged many hours at all. I switched back to DMZ a couple weeks ago but I haven't been able to play for longer than a couple hours, not continuous, so I am not sure if the DMZ issues I was having before have been fixed.

It takes so many hours of gaming on different settings that it is really hard to tell. I do know when the router is working properly that speeds are blazing fast. Very close to running straight modem, with no one on the network. If someone is on the network, even with QOS enabled, you can notice a difference. Given xbox is more about upload speed than download so QOS might not have that much of an effect. And XBOX uses such little bandwidth that it is more about DNS servers and power of the router. I'm looking forward to the next release to see how things play out.

I did notice a difference between Merlin and stock FW when i was logging many hours a few months ago. I am not sure if that has been resolved on stock FW because I haven't gone back to it.

 

[jayboyyyy]

did you guys ever turn on DNS filtering in router to filter away porn and malicious sites? Will that affect your connection to xbox live?

I'm no expert on networking but I would assume that any extra filtering your DNS client does or filter you have on the router would effect your connection. Any extra bumps in the road can cause delay. If you are not playing games where precision is essential then it would not be that noticeable I would assume. XBOX uses such little bandwidth that the key to getting the best connection is lowering the time between your xbox and another one or xbox's servers for xbox1. Finding the fastest DNS can be very helpful. It needs to be very reliable too for obvious reasons. And the better you connection the more likely you are to get host for halo anyway. If you have host then you always have the best connection.

 

[BreakingDad]

I know it goes against the grain of the purists, what works for us is having upnp on, port forwarding the xbox ports as per portforward.com and having dmz on. Then on the xbox setting one dns to your isps and the other dns to googles 8.8.4.4. I'm aware that technically dmz should overide upnp and portforwarding. But if it works like this i'm leaving it.

 

[jayboyyyy]

I know it goes against the grain of the purists, what works for us is having upnp on, port forwarding the xbox ports as per portforward.com and having dmz on. Then on the xbox setting one dns to your isps and the other dns to googles 8.8.4.4. I'm aware that technically dmz should overide upnp and portforwarding. But if it works like this i'm leaving it.

Idk why but i have found that setting the xbox to manual DNS does not work well if the DNS is not your routers default gateway. I'm not sure why but the only increased connection i have gotten from switching DNS is if it is through the router itself.

Maybe its just the FW I am on or something but for some reason: if i set up a client to go to a specific DNS, its ping rates are slower than if i set the router up to route to that same DNS and have the client set its DNS to routers default gateway. Clearly this shouldn't be the case but this is what i experienced.

Just remembered to mention that these test were not done with the client being DMZed. So I'm not sure how that would effect things.

 

[MarkyPancake]

Bear in mind that if you use multiple Xboxes on Live at the same time, port forwarding will only allow the console IP assigned to those ports to get an Open NAT.

 

[BreakingDad]

Idk why but i have found that setting the xbox to manual DNS does not work well if the DNS is not your routers default gateway. I'm not sure why but the only increased connection i have gotten from switching DNS is if it is through the router itself.

Maybe its just the FW I am on or something but for some reason: if i set up a client to go to a specific DNS, its ping rates are slower than if i set the router up to route to that same DNS and have the client set its DNS to routers default gateway. Clearly this shouldn't be the case but this is what i experienced.

Just remembered to mention that these test were not done with the client being DMZed. So I'm not sure how that would effect things.

Hell I'd like to say ignore my original post, that's not working well, Its ok for a few days then won't connect to xbox live.

I'm now trying the back to basics method that DSWit posted on my other xbox post:-

"I've always let my 360 do normal dhcp over wireless with upnp enabled and I haven't had a problem for a long time and never with my RT-N66U. It's a very old xbox with one of the first usb wireless adapters ms released for the 360. I don't have optimize for the xbox selected and i stream a lot of hd over G wifi with only a rare glitch here and there.

Combining a static ip, DMZ, port forwarding and upnp may be your problem. I'd try disabling the dmz and removing the forwarding and let automatic dhcp and upnp do their job. Doing a factory reset on the router might be a good idea as well. "

This is working well so far. Good luck