New Router

[HELDERZINHO]

Hi people, i'm from Portugal because of that my english is not so good, i want to buy a router mainly for gaming by cable (500/100) the wireless is just for mobile phones, which router do you advise? I read many reviews and the ones i read best things are Linksys WRT32x, Netgear r7800, XR500, r7000, r6700, Asus RT-ac86u and Asus Rt-ac68u, for my budget the ac68u i think is the best but i could try to search a used one from the others, i play FPS (Call of Duty) and my router is from my ISP (Technicolor TG784n v3), i know that with Asus i don't need my ISP router because i don't use my phone, is better that way or with bridge mode? Thanks

 

[Trip]

Welcome to SNB!

For FPS gaming, the most significant things you want to do networking-wise are 1) hard-wire your gaming PC (never game seriously over wireless) and 2) ensure you have proper QoS in place, if required, to eliminate bufferbloat (which is often the primary cause of most network-based gaming issues on residential networks).

#1 is fairly simple. Just make sure you have a good quality patch cable from your PC to your router, plus the most up-to-date/stable drivers for your PC's network card and chipset.

#2 can be a bit more technical. The simplest option is to just see if the ISP combo unit will perform well enough on its own, with routing and wifi included. With your PC hard-wired to the Technicolor, head over to DSLReports.com/speedtest and perform a test.

If your bufferbloat score is an A- to A+, you'll probably be fine using the Technicolor as the router, or you could use any of the routers you listed with the Technicolor in bridge mode. If you went with your own router, for simplicity and reliability I would lean towards an Asus running Merlin.

If your bufferbloat score is a B+ or much below that, you're going to want a router that offers SQM QoS, in combination with the Technicolor running in bridge mode. For SQM to be applied properly, you will want a Qualcomm-based router (no Asus models; they're all Broadcom-based). I could get into the technical explanation of why that is if desired, but suffice it to say, just trust me. The simplest option for that would be an Eero Pro base unit; just install via the wizard, turn on "SQM" in the Eero Labs section of the phone app and you're done. If Eero is not available in Portugal, then the next best option would be OpenWRT installed on a Netgear R7800. Configuring SQM on OpenWRT is a bit more involved, but not too bad with help from Google and OpenWRT's forums.

The above approach should maximize your gaming performance for Call of Duty.

 

[HELDERZINHO]

thanks for the answer, i play PS4 not PC, and i play with fiber cable direct form PS4 to Router Gigaport

 

[Trip]

Got it. With a PS4, the same two points still apply, minus updating the NIC drivers, as that's already (hopefully) taken care of for you by Sony.

 

[HELDERZINHO]

Welcome to SNB!

For FPS gaming, the most significant things you want to do networking-wise are 1) hard-wire your gaming PC (never game seriously over wireless) and 2) ensure you have proper QoS in place, if required, to eliminate bufferbloat (which is often the primary cause of most network-based gaming issues on residential networks).

#1 is fairly simple. Just make sure you have a good quality patch cable from your PC to your router, plus the most up-to-date/stable drivers for your PC's network card and chipset.

#2 can be a bit more technical. The simplest option is to just see if the ISP combo unit will perform well enough on its own, with routing and wifi included. With your PC hard-wired to the Technicolor, head over to DSLReports.com/speedtest and perform a test.

If your bufferbloat score is an A- to A+, you'll probably be fine using the Technicolor as the router, or you could use any of the routers you listed with the Technicolor in bridge mode. If you went with your own router, for simplicity and reliability I would lean towards an Asus running Merlin.

If your bufferbloat score is a B+ or much below that, you're going to want a router that offers SQM QoS, in combination with the Technicolor running in bridge mode. For SQM to be applied properly, you will want a Qualcomm-based router (no Asus models; they're all Broadcom-based). I could get into the technical explanation of why that is if desired, but suffice it to say, just trust me. The simplest option for that would be an Eero Pro base unit; just install via the wizard, turn on "SQM" in the Eero Labs section of the phone app and you're done. If Eero is not available in Portugal, then the next best option would be OpenWRT installed on a Netgear R7800. Configuring SQM on OpenWRT is a bit more involved, but not too bad with help from Google and OpenWRT's forums.

The above approach should maximize your gaming performance for Call of Duty.

Hi, i made the test on DSLReports and got this:

https://imgur.com/6Er5IBs

The tests is about 250/314 mb, not near of 500 but upload is more than the 100mb, i look for EERO but is too expensive and the Netgear R7800 not so much but still high, i read about Ubiquiti is good for what i want? do you have other router less expensive that eero e netgear that is good for my bufferbloat problem? thanks

 

[Trip]

Considering your budget, you might actually be able to get away with a Broadcom all-in-one, even it's not quite as good in the SQM department as Qualcomm, MIPS or x86. I'd opt for the Asus AC66U_B1 (with Merlin) over the AC68U, as it's actually got a more powerful CPU and is 20 euro cheaper. It likely won't be able to do QoS on your 500Mb/s download, though. But that's OK, you should be able to leave it off on download and enable only on upload (100Mb/s), which is where most of the de-bloating happens anyways.

Beyond that, you might consider a discrete wired router + a cheaper-hardware AP, but the price isn't going to be any cheaper, and there aren't any options I'm aware of in your budget that will be able to do SQM in both directions (600Mb/s aggregate) besides a used PC or cheap one off eBay, with a multi-NIC card, running OpenWRT or pfSense. With Ubiquiti, you could do an ER-X plus something like a TP-Link EAP225v3, but again, you'd only be able SQM on upload (not fast enough for download + upload, or even download alone). If you're willing to skill up and learn Mikrotik RouterOS (no small feat) and PCQ + queue trees, you might look at their RB3011, but still, you'd be right up around an R7800, only without wireless... You might also look at a PC Engines APU2 (OpenWRT SQM at 770/930 for its AMD GX-412TC CPU), but again, the overall setup won't be any cheaper outright than the 66U_B1.

The simplest way to guarantee quick and easy SQM completely on both your download and upload would be a UniFi Dream Machine with Smart Queue on, but at €331 it's likely triple your current budget. Perhaps just pull the trigger on the 66U_B1, load Merlin and hopefully that will be "good enough".

 

[LongRangeSkeet]

Considering your budget, you might actually be able to get away with a Broadcom all-in-one, even it's not quite as good in the SQM department as Qualcomm, MIPS or x86. I'd opt for the Asus AC66U_B1 (with Merlin) over the AC68U, as it's actually got a more powerful CPU and is 20 euro cheaper. It likely won't be able to do QoS on your 500Mb/s download, though. But that's OK, you should be able to leave it off on download and enable only on upload (100Mb/s), which is where most of the de-bloating happens anyways.

Beyond that, you might consider a discrete wired router + a cheaper-hardware AP, but the price isn't going to be any cheaper, and there aren't any options I'm aware of in your budget that will be able to do SQM in both directions (600Mb/s aggregate) besides a used PC or cheap one off eBay, with a multi-NIC card, running OpenWRT or pfSense. With Ubiquiti, you could do an ER-X plus something like a TP-Link EAP225v3, but again, you'd only be able SQM on upload (not fast enough for download + upload, or even download alone). If you're willing to skill up and learn Mikrotik RouterOS (no small feat) and PCQ + queue trees, you might look at their RB3011, but still, you'd be right up around an R7800, only without wireless... You might also look at a PC Engines APU2 (OpenWRT SQM at 770/930 for its AMD GX-412TC CPU), but again, the overall setup won't be any cheaper outright than the 66U_B1.

The simplest way to guarantee quick and easy SQM completely on both your download and upload would be a UniFi Dream Machine with Smart Queue on, but at €331 it's likely triple your current budget. Perhaps just pull the trigger on the 66U_B1, load Merlin and hopefully that will be "good enough".

I've never heard of PCengines before. Do you know if they are able to run Untangle without issues and how good are they when compared to something what Protectli or Qotom offers.

Thanks

 

[Trip]

@LongRangeSkeet - Apparently it will, per this Untangle forums thread, which requires a manual edit of syslinux.cfg on the USB installer, so that it automatically boots to a console and issues the install commands. I'd presume the "C4" model referenced in that post is similar enough to the current models that the same routine will work. You may have to do a bit more due diligence.