Gaming Router Features Explained: Prioritising Traffic and Optimising Your Gaming Connection

Getting the Best Gaming Experience through Optimising 

With the Gaming world literally exploding in front of eyes, the relentless search for bigger and more powerful machines, processors and graphics is a constant.  

In this article, we will take a closer look at what is behind the humble gaming router, what it is, what it does, and how it does it.  

Plus we'll have some basic background and ideas on how to ensure you have the right equipment to get the most out of your gaming experience.  

Overlooked

In the gaming world, it is easy to get fixated on the gaming laptop, the processors and everything that goes into a great gaming experience but the router can often get overlooked.

So let's delve into why a gaming router is an integral part of your gaming performance.

So what is a Gaming Router, and what is the Difference? 

I think at this point it's safe to say anyone reading this understands what a basic router is in your home or office and the purpose it serves to provide you with regular uninterrupted (in most cases) internet.  

OK let's take a step backwards before we dive straight in and take a look at the three fundamentals of gaming routers in general:

• Latency
• Ping
• Lag

Latency - Refers to how long it takes a 'Packet' (a unit of travelling data) to get from you to a server and back to you. And we are talking in milliseconds here.

Ping - Takes the form of a signal which is what latency and lag are measured by. In essence, your laptop will send a 'Packet' as a test to your server measuring the departure and arrival times. Sometimes this is referred to as 'Ping time or Ping rate'.

Lag - this is categorised through the delay experienced when performing an action on your system. This can be characters forming or things moving on-screen. 

So if you are incurring a high latency and ping rate, then you'll have the awful feeling of knowing the game is behind you. essentially pressing a button to shoot and the person/object moving by the time the shot is fired and all your doing is hitting thin air.  NOT GOOD!

Prioritising Traffic and Optimising Your Gaming Connection

Lag is determined by the way in which your router is constantly distributing traffic through your devices. 

This is most common in households where someone in the house is gaming - let's say for argument's sake playing 'Fortnite' while someone else in the house is on 'Netflix'. 

Basic or older routers are programmed to think on a 'first-come, first-served basis'  So if Netflix was on first it will get the majority of the attention from the router, so network management was not part of the makeup of routers back in the day. 

Distance also plays a part with older routers, they tend to pick up and prioritise what's closest to them. 

However, gaming router features are different. They are there to prioritise you! Ensuring your gaming experience is fluid, but to achieve this they use upgraded technology as we will explain. 

Gaming Routers Essential Features

Gaming routers are much more sophisticated units than normal routers. So now we'll take you through the important features and also drop some buzzwords in when you are looking to make a purchase.

This is how gaming routers use cutting-edge technology to make sure you don't get any lag when at the height of your gaming. 

Quality of Service (QoS)

Quality of service acts as an umbrella header for a tech that controls and prioritises different kinds of traffic whilst managing bandwidth control across multiple devices. 

With a gaming router, this will give you more juice than someone in another room watching Netflix.  

Arguably this could be the poster-boy difference between your standard router you see everywhere and a gaming router. That is not to say that there aren't high-spec routers on the market that have QoS features and new wireless technology embedded, but a QoS system in a designated gaming router is designed with two purposes in mind:

• Low Latency
• Reduced Lag 

So the 'who got there first' scenario makes little difference you're data comes first regardless of when you made the network request. 

You can get adaptive QoS settings on routers; enabling you to manually select priority levels for everything in the house. 

Wi-Fi 6 and 6E What they Mean for Gaming

802.11 is the standard depiction for the wireless protocol that is supported by your router. This determines things such as network speed and data transmission and on what frequency it operates. 

In recent times the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)  and the Wi-Fi Alliance were instrumental in simplifying the categories and re-naming them leaving us with the following:

WiFi Technical Description

1 802.11b

2 802.11a

3 802.11g

4 802.11n

5 802.11ac

6 802.11ax

With the world now migrating to 5G, the newer standards deliver faster services with higher network security.

WiFi 6 was on everyone's lips and rightly so. It was a game-changer for the gaming industry. So in today's market if you are buying a router you look for it as standard. 

If you have a router that is underperforming as it's WiFi 5 then you are supporting a maximum of 3.5 Gbps compared to a potential 9.6 Gbps with WiFi 6, so you are getting left behind in a hurry!

WiFi 6 also allows the support of multi-devices within a house. Multiple devices are the number one cause of latency. Wifi 6 upgraded the existing MU-MIMO standard allowing eight devices together to be able to communicate, which doubled that of WiFi 5. 

WiFi 6E

However, there's a new player in town and boy this is a whole new level for the gaming community 'WiFi 6E' The 'E' stands for extended. 

This comes with you needing new hardware to be able to access the 6 GHz band. So you will need to look for and specify to your stockist that you require 6E.

To simplify the difference is that you are accessing a different highway of the internet than everyone else.  

The highway I'm referring to is like travelling in your own lane on the highway. Opposite is everyone else in gridlock while there you have no traffic.

6E is the biggest internet upgrade in over two decades and it is a significant event, spend some time looking up the advantages and you'll know there are other hardcore gamers out there looking for a 6E-compatible router and stealing a march on everyone else. 

Network Bands and Frequency

Following on from WiFi 6E let's take a look at where we are heading and more importantly what we are leaving behind.

In essence just like your mobile phone WiFi also uses radio waves. Commonly you'll see the spec on a router referring to either:

2.4 GHz or 5 GHz

Referring to the spectrum it operates in. 

If we were to generalise these then you'd categorise the 2.4 GHz as being more reliable to carry information further distances but at slower speeds, in the region of 450-600 Mbps. 

The 5 GHz signal comes at a much higher speed generally up to 1300 Mbps, however, that can be lower in real time. But there's a catch, albeit faster, the high-frequency means they don't do well with solid objects such as the walls in your house, so it packs more of a punch over short distances. 

In essence, you are doing a trade-off between coverage area and speed.

But then we get to spectrum congestion.  When talking about 2.4 and 5 GHz we are talking about specified frequencies.  

When there are too many devices using the same band the likelihood of signals clashing is high, therefore resulting in a sub-standard connection. 

The 2.4 GHz band has been congested for a long time now but so did the 5 GHz band experience the same issue a few years back. 

So this is where WiFi 6 and 6E come in. As mentioned earlier this is the biggest overhaul of the internet in over two decades. As it increased the spectrum from an average of a 400 MHz range to a 1600 MHz range. 

That's the equivalent of going from a Ford to a Ferrari on a highway. 

As has been well-documented some countries were slow in adopting the 6 GHz bands for WiFi. Fortunately last year Wi-Fi 6E – AX 6GHz was made available in Australia.  

So when you are looking at a gaming router time to get in the fast lane, put your foot down and find a 6E compatible router. 

ASUS ROG - TP-LINK - NETGEAR, all the usual suspects are delivering outstanding gaming routers in 2023, plus other entries on the market are worth checking out. 

SUMMARY

With the recent upgrades of WiFi 6 and 6E, the market has lots of gaming router options out there. But as always the best way to shop for a gaming-specific router is to analyse your requirements first.

How many devices are going to be running at any one point?  That is the first question you need to ask yourself. In many households, you are already looking at around 10 connectable devices.

But with the constant rise in IoT and wearable devices such as Smartwatches and new Smart Home devices, congestion on your network is more than likely. 

If you are in one of these households then you need to look at a minimum of a WiFi 6 router but let's be honest we all know where we are heading in 2023/24 and that's WiFi 6E dependency! 

So even though they might be a little pricey, what isn't when it comes to top-level gaming these days? So invest that little extra and get to prioritise optimising connection options and start gaming in the 6E superhighway while ensuring every other device in the house runs smoothly. Happy hunting for your new device!