Help please

I am having usses with my FPS and MS fluxuating like mas at times. I THINK it might be my router as I noticed that when my roommate connected to the wireless my frame rate dropped. Is there a fix? I can’t connect to the router via hard line. We have wood heat and the room the router is in is freezing in the fall and winter.

I’m not a technical guy, so I can’t provide any networking advice.

However, I’ve had good luck running ethernet cables a decent distance to connect computers that aren’t close to my router. Cables like this are pretty cheap on Amazon (sub-$10). Any chance that could be an easy way out?

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I don’t think so. It’s up a floor. I’m going to try a better wireless router with more range and bandwidth.

Make sure you only enable one protocol, so only 802.11n or only 802.11g, since there are routers and OSs that go completely nuts when there are two different ones connected to the same wireless network.

Most often this occurs when someone’s running an old Windows Laptop and someone else is running a Mac.

Netgear makes a pretty good and inexpensive wireless range extender for under $30 that might help. Simple to install. Take it up to the main router, press the WPS key on both until your extender goes solid, then move it downstairs.

I’m not sure its a range issue. But a issue of usage. My router is just the cheap company standard issue one. Can any of the tech gurus we have tell me; Is a gaming router going to be better? Or will something cheaper be just as good?

There are a few things with routers

  1. You have to reboot them about every 1-4wks. Pull the power cord, let sit for a few minutes, then restart. I find my latency goes to hell if I have not reset my router in a while.

  2. Range. You can get a signal strength app for your phone and walk around and see where your WiFi is strong and where it is weak. Usually the 5G band is short range, and the 2G band is longer range.

  3. Devices. Routers are rated for a certain number of devices. Once you exceed it, it lags out. For this reason I bout 2 range extenders, both Netgear. One is a powerhouse with capability for many devices, and I have this on the main level of the house where all my smart devices grab it. The other is a tiny one upstairs just to get TV and wifi there. I think around 10 devices you need to step it up. Not every smart light or switch in the house counts as a device, but every phone does, every laptop does, every pad does, and they all add up.

Do you think extenders will Help with the FPS and MS on WoW yo-yoing? Or is it a capacity issue?

Your original description said your FPS dropped when a friend joined. That is a bandwidth issue. If your friend was doing massive downloads, that could lag things out. So how much data you pull down at the same time affects things. If your friend caps out the download, then your bandwidth is throttled.

To solve the bandwidth problem is to pay for better service from the provider. Usually they rate plans on download rates.

Now if your friend wasn’t doing anything particularly intense, I think perhaps the problem may be that your router can not handle a lot of people at the same time well. You can go read reviews at Amazon and shop around for a better router. You need to count up the number of devices you have and make a call on what kind of capacity you need.

If it is a range issue, when you walk around the house with the WiFi signal detector app, you will see where the deadspots are. You can then sit in areas of high bars, and avoid low bar areas. If the whole room is low bars, a range extender can help. If you are in the flaky 1-2 bar range, you definitely need a range extender.

Not sure why you can not hard wire to the router. I have my main TV hard wired, and my main gaming PC hard wired. WiFi is flaky, going in and out, needing router resets…just not as reliable. That hard line gives you reliable connection to the router that eliminates a lot of that. You still will need to reset it periodically for latency.

If you have yo-yo-ing, I think what happens there is packet loss. The server says you are at (x,y) and your client that missed a packet update thinks it is at (x1, y1), and the server forces you to update your position when it has conflict, and you yo-yo. This also shows up as clickys you can not click. If you reloadui and can then click, this is what has happened. Latency is a bear, and you need to learn how to traceroute to the blizzard server. Typically where most of the latency loss is from your house to the street. I had horrible latency with Comcast once because the cable had a rusty connector on top of the telephone pole. Each and every connection from the street to your router can drop signal strength. When that strength goes down to a certain point, you have all sorts of issues with consistency. For me with FIOS I have a box where the main phone line comes in to the house, and that box was really old and the last service guy I knew fixed it, improving things.

If you have choices with providers, switch frequently. When you do this they will update hardware, and give you better prices. With internet, the longer you stay with them, the worse they treat you, and they have whole departments set up to win you over from other providers and offer all sorts of goodies to get you to switch.

Thanks for the advice. Still having the issue here’s what I did.

New router. Netgear64.
Upped my internet from my provider. Was 2/1 is now 4/2.
Made sure my laptop was set to Max performance and my NVIDIA card as well.
Turned off all my add-ons
Turned graphic settings on WoW to min

I cant run off the ether net because I cant drill holes in all my walls. I don’t own the house and the owner was a pain about the internet to begin with. Since the ethernet is upstairs and the upstairs is not heated I cant run the computer in the winter unless its down stairs (where the sweet sweet heat is)

Now, from what I have looked at, what I next need to check is CPU temp or Memory leakage. Know any good programs that are free and are not bloat-ware?

My provider is basically the only one. I live in the boonies.

I will get a wi-fi extender if you still think it might be an issue.

If you upgraded from 2/1 to 4/2, then F’me… You really DO live in the boonies…

And did you check the protocol settings on your wireless router?

I did…is there something I should look for?

Yes. Make sure you only have one protocol enabled. Since you said in your original message that your issues are when someone else connects to your wireless.

So either they’re sucking up bandwidth, or their connecting to the wireless causes overall performance to degrade.

If you can’t pull cables, something you could look into is this: https://www.techradar.com/news/networking/powerline-networking-what-you-need-to-know-930691

I wonder if this would work on old wires. I have an old house with knob and tube. It may not function on something like that.

The FPS issue happens either way. its just more frequent ly notices when someone else accesses the network.

ARRRRRG! This crud is driving me batty. If I could find root cause I could fix it, but there is just so much stuff and I live in the boonies (as I said) it’s usually $100 just to get someone out here.

Hey Landerprime-

I am no pro here, just putting what I know out there.

If you can’t drill, you may still be able to go out windows. I have a SiriusXM antenna going through a closed window. Might be able to put some kind of temporary sealer to keep the cold out when you do.

I know in previous versions of Windows you could ctrl-alt-delete, bring up task managers and go to the performance tab to see what process was gobbling up what memory, and just watch them over time, or come back to them over time. I know some addons in WoW used to leak and were really bloaty, and would run up memory consumption over time. I forget what I used to use to track that. Any of the older addons that were based on ACE mods should be free of that issue, and ElvUI is pretty clean and lean.

Mu CPU is around 15% max. My Memory seems high to me Around 70-75% during the issues. I haven’t really paid attention before so I don’t know if that is high.

I’m wondering if I need to refresh my OS. Maybe reload WoW. I hate doing that. There’s always some data or program I forget to save.

what is the other person doing on their laptop? Does the new router have Quality of Service (QoS) features?

Does this issue only come up in WoW? or does it happen with any application after the other user gets onto the wireless? You mention that your memory is 70 - 75% during the issue how do the resources look when everything is working?

I am thinking that it maybe the other user is still sucking up all the bandwidth. You can try using the QoS features on the router to prioritize WoW. It would kind of depend on what is being done on the other computer.

As for wifi vs ethernet, I have a friend that swears by powerline ethernet. I have never really used it, but he does not seem to have any issues with it. Maybe that would be worth looking into.

Unfortunately the issue happens if I’m the only one on or not. Starts about 20 min after I log on. I run about 55-60% memory until the issue start acting up.
No QoS on my router, but…
Do I keep SSID broadcast? enabled?
Do I keep 20/40 MHz coexistence enabled?
I’m looking into powerline. system. I’m checking if they work with Knob and tube. (probably not)