About to install an AC-1900 Asus router, replacing my currernt RT-N66U. In terms of WiFi environment and equipment, we have one old laptop that is 2.4Ghz only but doesn’t need to do anything more that browsing, etc. (my wife’s laptop and she just uses the wifi for internet browsing, facebook, etc.) We have my laptop with 2.4/5 GHz and AC capability, and on this one I do occassional but regular large downloads but no real internet gaming so not super critical for speed.
Where I do want speed optimized is, first priority, my 3 Chromecast 2s that I will also be setting up today - for those the primary speed need is streaming via Plex, mainly rips of movies from our library (and we have been getting variable stuttering here, mainly on HD stuff) and Netflix or Hulu (usually casting from either my laptop or my iPhone -not sure how that impacts speed to be honest) and the after that my 2 PS4s. One of these is directly connected via ethernet (in the same room as the router) so that’s not a Wifi issue, and the other is upstairs and connected via WiFi.
Oh - my house setup is the router is in a bedroom downstairs. I have a PS4 and Chromecast in the den upstairs, and another Chromecast in a sun room upstairs (the furthest away from the router, though I still seem to get pretty good speedtest.net results.) And my current internet service is 100 Mbps down and 3 (sigh) Mbps up.
So - I am pretty ignorant when it comes to optimizing a router these days. In particular, the QOS feature is touted as a real plus on this router but I have no idea how to set one of these ups.
Your internet is pretty fast, honestly you won’t need QOS unless there’s some serious torrenting going on. My guess would be all issues would disappear with capping the client that’s torrenting itself. I mean, you could set up QOS. It’s just a PITA for what I think will be little gain.
You’re saying you’re getting stuttering on a wired chromecast watching HD content. That’s very strange given your comparatively generous bandwidth. QOS is like a stop light, it’s only if there’s a lot of computers fighting for the same highway. If the highway is empty and you’re still having trouble, QOS is gonna do nothing. What the problem COULD be could be many things and frankly a PITA to diagnose. Could be a failing modem, could be congestion, could be comcast being jerks and applying “traffic optimization.”
You should be able to play multiple HD streams! I have 20 Mpbs down and I have no issues with 1080p Netflix.
Setup a guest wifi you can give away, basically I think you don’t share files with them so they can’t access your network backup drives or shared folders etc. They’ll still be able to facebook to their hearts’ content.
Oh - my house setup is the router is in a bedroom downstairs. I have a PS4 and Chromecast in the den upstairs, and another Chromecast in a sun room upstairs (the furthest away from the router, though I still seem to get pretty good speedtest.net results.) And my current internet service is 100 Mbps down and 3 (sigh) Mbps up.
Is there a good reason to have the router downstairs? Why introduce more walls and distance than you need to?
Where I do want speed optimized is, first priority, my 3 Chromecast 2s that I will also be setting up today - for those the primary speed need is streaming via Plex, mainly rips of movies from our library (and we have been getting variable stuttering here, mainly on HD stuff)
Plex stuttering could well be due to Plex settings and/or server limitations rather than the network.
There are a lot of factors to Plex streaming. Lately I started to get videos that weren’t playing at all on my FireTV. Usually there were no problems at all, so I started investigating. Found out that Direct Play turned on plus an older decoder implementation on the FireTV meant that the newer encodes I was doing with HEVC were not able to work with the FireTV, but disabling the Direct Play (thus making the server transcode everything) fixed that problem right away.
Plex shouldn’t have any issues streaming over wifi unless your wifi is total garbage. If you think it’s an issue, you can force your server to do a 2 or 3mbps 720p encode in whatever client you are using and see if that fixes the stuttering. If it does, it’s 20/80 connection vs encoding issue, in my experience.
Edit: Oh, and installing the K-Lite Codec pack helped the server do its job. You can grab the ninite installer and have it stealth install K-Lite for you, I have no idea what that installer actually looks like these days.
