Video game lag caused by router, TV or internet Provider?????

Question

Video game lag caused by router, TV or internet Provider?????

Equipment

Apple Airport Extreme

Xbox 360 connected via WiFi on 5ghz (n)

LG tv LED 1080i (on game mode) TruMotion or DCM turned off

Insight broadband 30.0

Recent speed test results (speedtest.net) numbers fairly consistant, but ping fluctuates.

Download= 13.56 Mbps

Upload= 3.16 Mbps

Ping= 39ms

My problem is that when I play Multiplayer games online, It feels as if I am a half second to full second behind. In other words, what I am reacting to on my TV has already happened a second ago in the Game. My feelings are confirmed in the "kill cams" or replays of the last interactons during the game which show a totally different version of what happened from my point of view. This is often referred to as "lag". This lag seems to be even worse during matches where I am the host. Which goes against common video game knowledge that the host of the match has the best connection therefore will have least lag or connection issues. It seems quite the opposite in my case, when I am host the lag is worst, when I am not host the lag is just bad. Unfortunately for me, I am picked for host a mojority of the time apperently because of my 30.0 internet connection.

My question is to what exactly is causing the lag or delay. Could it be an issue between my xbox and router communicating info? I have tried port forwarding and it seems to have no effect and perhaps I did it wrong. Could it simply be a delay from the tv converting the feed via HDMI into 1080i? Could it have something to do with my internet provider, such as ping and latency issues? Could I adjust my Airport Extreme settings in a different way perhaps?

Much thanks in advance for any advise or discussion.

Airport Extreme-OTHER

Posted on Oct 13, 2011 4:44 AM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

148,573 points

Oct 13, 2011 9:51 AM in response to RyanFromErlanger

Let's start with your Internet connection. Do you have consumer or business-grade service? That is, does your ISP provide you with a dynamic Public IP address and greater download bandwidth or a static Public IP address and equal download/upload bandwidth? For example, is your rated download/upload service listed as 30/5 Mbps? or 50/50 Mbps? When hosting on-line games, you will need significantly greater upload bandwidth for smooth play, especially for those connected to your game server.

As far as trying to determine the bandwidth bottleneck on your local network, I would suggest that you use utilities, like iPerf and AJA System Test (or their Windows equivalents if you use a PC) to measure throughput between various network segments. Look for those segments with the lowest throughput as the area(s) to try to improve.

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