Instructions for optimizing your home gaming network

PC gaming requires the best hardware, and we gamers are always looking for the edge to win. Previously, the network connection did not play a very important role. But with the rise of multiplayer games, a good network connection is required for a smooth gaming experience. Without optimizing the gaming network, even if your computer can run at the highest configuration, it will lead to instability or lag during gameplay, taking away some of your fun.

By taking care in setting up your home network, you can get the most out of your internet speed.

^{Just looking at the ping and speed, playing the game is a disaster}

Start with the basics

Before we dive into the technicalities, let’s start with the basics. The foundation of a stable network connection lies in bandwidth. When we talk about computer networks, bandwidth refers to the amount of data that can be sent and downloaded over the wire (or radio waves). To make it easier to understand, imagine it as the diameter of a water pipe. When it comes to your home network, your router is like the water pipe that connects your house to the water center.

Before we go any further, take a minute and restart the modem and router. Check that your router is running the latest firmware, as new firmware can optimize and fix router errors. Don’t trust the software that’s included in it; Get it directly from the manufacturer’s website. Alternatively, connect your computer directly to the modem using an Ethernet network cable and run SpeedTest to evaluate the connection from the network provider. If your speeds aren’t what they promised, let your carrier know. Otherwise, you will waste time fixing errors that are out of range of your home network.

How is the gaming network different?

With the sheer volume of games available today, including first-person shooters and MMORPGs, constant data transfer is required to create a smooth and stable gaming experience. Just downloading the game’s initial data, as well as patches and updates uses a lot of bandwidth, but when playing, the game uses very little data, contrary to what many people think.

Stream NetFlix can consume 3GB per hour for HD video. In contrast, gaming uses only 20MB to 80MB per hour, depending on the game. With such a small capacity for online gaming, having a faster connection doesn’t make much of a difference unless there are multiple concurrent users on that line. The key here is to prioritize your gaming bandwidth, and not let other things take away your gaming bandwidth.

While streaming movies requires downloading a large amount of data, online games use only a little bit of downloading and uploading. MMORPGs are also quite sensitive to packet loss, losing a packet can cause the game to crash. With FPS and racing games, the emphasis is on minimizing latency. Latency measures the amount of time it takes to send data from one point to another.

Buy the right hardware

With the need for a stable, secure and low-latency connection, serious gamers will see the benefits of using a wired network. In the vast majority of cases, CAT5e and CAT6 network wires will provide more stability and less interference. If you have CAT5e, use it. However, CAT6 will be less susceptible to interference over long distances than CAT5e.

Ethernet network cable should be the first choice to connect your PC to the network. However, this is not always achievable because it is possible that the network unit will be placed in an inconvenient position to get wires to your computer. Another option, although not as optimal, is wireless (wireless network). Wireless is now used by many gamers. Along with its convenience, gamers may face higher latency, lower security and less stability than wired connection.

Just like you wouldn’t want to play games with a $50,000 office mouse. It’s best to have something better than the router your carrier provides. The router is the core of the network, and 802.11n (or slower 802.11g) routers can’t keep up with the high-speed gaming needs in today’s market. These routers (which worked fine in the past) are not designed to support multiple devices at the same time; they’re not designed to support all of the smartphones, tablets, and media streams that gobble up your network. Therefore, buy yourself a good router.

Now that the computer is connected and the carrier problem is resolved, we begin to shift our focus to optimizing our network. The two main locations that need intervention are the router and the computer’s network card interface (NIC – Network Interface Card).

Router Quality of Service (QoS)

With so many devices vying for bandwidth with your computer, you need a router with some sort of technology to help prioritize your data traffic. The technology we are talking about is Quality of Service, or QoS for short. QoS allows the router to act as a ‘traffic controller’ of data, i.e. who gets into the priority lane, who has to wait. QoS prioritizes transmission rate sensitive data, like game data games for example. Without QoS, Windows will never prioritize gaming capacity. On the other hand, with a QoS-enabled gaming router, game-related things take precedence over other types of data, making gameplay smooth even when other things are choking on bandwidth.

Obviously QoS is an indispensable thing in a gaming router, but all QoS is not the same. From what we know, there are currently two approaches to QoS. The first method is that the router will prioritize the device, and the second method is the router that prioritizes the application. With the device-priority D-Link and ASRock devices we’ve reviewed, this is an unlikely method. Asus and Netgear devices are tuned to prioritize gaming applications for better results. From the screenshot above, the software in the Netgear X4S router has four levels of network traffic priority:

1. Highest (Highest): VoIP
2. High (High): Gaming
3. thường (normal): Surfing the web
4. Low (low): Torrent

The QoS settings of the Netgear X4S can be run in the default mode as above, or in manual mode. Manual mode gives us control over each level. They will be ranked according to the user’s priority. Every router is different, so read your router’s manual carefully to see what the QoS settings look like and how to tweak them.

Killer NIC

Another place to intervene is to tune and optimize network traffic at the device level. On a gaming PC, this is what the networking hardware from the Killer NIC can do. The old Killer NIC cards had a hefty $279 price tag. It’s hard to spend money when the reviews about it are not high.

The company has since gone through many reforms, most recently under Rivet Netowrks. Killer NIC hardware is now integrated into gaming motherboards and gaming laptops from manufacturers such as Acer, Alienware, AsRock, MSI, and Gigabyte. Current products include the Killer E0 NIC and the Killer Wireless AC 1535. This technology can be applied to both wired and wireless connections. The secret here lies in Advanced Stream Direct 2.0, the software that optimizes traffic based on 6 important levels.

1. Gaming and voice chat (VoIP)
2. Chat and send messages
3. Stream videos
4. Surfing the web
5. Low-priority applications (Dropbox, Window Update)
6. Download (Torrent)

This can be seen as the QoS of your computer. The software can adjust the bandwidth (separate upload and download) with each software running in the machine. This is extremely valuable with computers that are used to multi-task while playing games. Advanced Stream Direct 2.0 is also designed to work with the QoS of modern gaming routers.

The Killer NIC also includes Double Shot Pro, which is designed to network from two different sources at the same time. For example, a wired connection from a network provider and a Wifi connection from another party, both can run at the same time. (Window currently can only connect to one line at a time for machines that do not use Killer).

Note: Double Shot Pro is not very applicable. However, sometimes, having two networks at the same time will show you a noticeable difference.

^{Frame rate can be adversely affected by lag in some games. We use FRAPS to measure the aspect ratio}

Quality check

What we discussed above theoretically seems fine. The question now is whether gaming routers with QoS enabled will be enough to prioritize data traffic for a smooth gaming experience, and will the Killer NIC make a difference in this setting.

With the gaming device, we use the MSI GT72 gmaing notebook with a quad-core CPU and discrete Nvidia GPU. The router will be the Netgear Nighthawks X4S. Laptop is connected wirelessly at 5GHz transmission. The test game will be an FPS, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault played at 1366 x 766 using Hardward Texture 2.0. Gamers will care more about the number of frames per second than the network quality, so we use FRAPS 3.5.99 to represent the average frame rate. This FRAPS software will also record the highest and lowest frames per second during 60 seconds of gameplay.

We start off basically by disabling QoS in the router and leaving the Killer feature off. It gives us a stable metric on gaming notebooks. As a result, the game averaged 74.7 fps and the lowest frame reached 66 fps, easily surpassing the 30 fps minimum that many people aim for.

With the amount of bandwidth just upgraded from the network provider, we have to run a lot of things to make the network congested. We decided to run a video from YouTube, about five 4K streams and one 1080p video. This makes full use of the download bandwidth, leaving the game with only 5 to 8 Mbps to use.

With 6 videos running in the background at the same time, Medal of Honor started to drag down to 24.7 fps, while the lowest fps reached 14. The game was also choppy to the point of being unplayable. With a frame rate drop of up to 67%, let’s see if the QoS cura router and Killer NIC can help.

The first step is to go into the router settings to enable QoS. Dynamic QoS (automatic) is disabled in the default settings, rating online gaming at 2/4. When running dynamic QoS, the results are still quite disappointing when the fps is only 26.5, still down 65% compared to the initial test.

The next step is to manually tweak the QoS and change the online game priority from High to Highest, making it the top priority. In this way, the frame rate has increased to 42.9 fps, still down 42.58% from the original. However, this test proved that QoS can prioritize traffic and help improve the game. It also shows us that the default setting of QoS is not optimal for gamers.

Next, we want to check out what the Killer NIC can do. The game is still running, the Killer NIC is on at default settings, while the router’s QoS is off. When playing games, the frame rate jumps to 53. While it’s still a 29% drop from the original, it’s a huge improvement over the router’s QoS. In other words, if you choose between QoS and Killer NIC, then the Killer NIC is clearly stronger in interfering with data traffic. This is already achieved in the default settings of the Killer NIC, with video still having “Normal” priority, but it has more intervention to prioritize bandwidth or limit downloads, in order to optimize “data traffic” data of the game” more.

With the final test, the same videos were played, both manual QoS and Killer NIC turned on. With both of these technologies enabled, the frame rate is 70.1 FPS. It’s only 6% down from the original, with frame rates as low as 52 fps. They all exceed the 30fps threshold so that the game does not lag. What’s even better, with all videos playing while the game experience is almost indistinguishable from the beginning.

Results like these are welcome for Killer NIC users, but the vast majority of NIC users are due to the fact that it’s already included in their laptop or motherboard. Without a Killer NIC, you can still optimize gaming with a wired connection, a good router, and QoS enabled. With the right settings, gaming bandwidth will be prioritized for routers and Ethernet cards to optimize bandwidth usage for the entire network.

Source: PCGamer