5GHZ Wireless incredibly smooth, with insufferably lag spikes

[Mithris]

My desktop computer is in my bedroom and the only device not within cable distance of my router, so for now I have it running on the 5GHz network. The steamlink is hardwired to my router. My initial experience with the link is that the picture is great and latency wrt input is minimal. The only downside is, every 10-15 seconds I will get a "spike" that drops the smooth video to 0 fps, the audio stutters, and the inputs fail. I turned on advanced network info with the steamlink, and it appears all the packets briefly are dropped.

My question is -- can anyone play seemlessly on 5GHz? And Is there anything I can do to track down what is causing these annoying spikes in the otherwise seemless play? Are there any alternatives to a 100 foot cat6 cable running through my house in order for me to use the steam link?

edit: i am on wireless-N, is anyone on wireless-AC playing smoothly?

[Greg]

Yes I use WiFi with my link, I have yet to hard wire it actually. I don't experience the "lag spikes" at all. I use an RT-AC86U, I'd highly recommend it.

[Mithris]

Początkowo opublikowane przez < Greg:

Yes I use WiFi with my link, I have yet to hard wire it actually. I don't experience the "lag spikes" at all. I use an RT-AC86U, I'd highly recommend it.

Is your PC hardwired or on wifi?

[Tucu]

I tried with 5GHz N for a while. Sometimes it worked, sometines it started to lag. I then just routed a CAT6 cable.
There are a few things you can try:
-switch channel
-make a list of devices connected to the 5GHz network and move them to the 2.4 network (mainly phones and tablets)
-exile other users of your 5Ghz network
-reduce distance between PC and router (specially if you are going through several walls and are farther than 10 or 15 meters)
-try powerline adapters
-try an AC router
-and then finally give up and get some CAT6 cable

[Greg]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Mithris:

Początkowo opublikowane przez < Greg:

Yes I use WiFi with my link, I have yet to hard wire it actually. I don't experience the "lag spikes" at all. I use an RT-AC86U, I'd highly recommend it.

Is your PC hardwired or on wifi?

hard wired

[Logicbomb]

I have my PC hardwired but my link is wireless N on 5ghz it's crazy how smooth it works compared to when I have it set at 2.4ghz. I get very small stutters that don't effect my game play at all. I have streamed Fall Out New Vegas and Rocket league this way just fine.

[Monkey]

should be getting mine tomorrow. I'll be running off a 5ghz ac. I'll let you know.

[Satoru]

Ultimately 'it depends'

If your home has a saturated 2.5GHz spectrum then yes going to 5GHz is better from a spectrum perspective.

The problem with 5GHz is that its penetration is poor. So if your router is in the basement and your PC/link are very far away, then you're probably going to have issues.

[Greg]

Most peoples homes are over saturated with 2.4Ghz. It's not just WiFi using that band. Most wireless home electronics are on the 2.4 band. I would definitely start with 5Ghz and if you can't make it work whatsoever then I would think about switching back to 2.4Ghz.

With that said, it would be smart to keep your streaming devices on the 5Ghz band while leaving the rest of your devices on the 2.4 Ghz band. The less wireless transmission going on while you're streaming the better.

[Satoru]

Początkowo opublikowane przez < Greg:

Most peoples homes are over saturated with 2.4Ghz. It's not just WiFi using that band. Most wireless home electronics are on the 2.4 band. I would definitely start with 5Ghz and if you can't make it work whatsoever then I would think about switching back to 2.4Ghz.

With that said, it would be smart to keep your streaming devices on the 5Ghz band while leaving the rest of your devices on the 2.4 Ghz band. The less wireless transmission going on while you're streaming the better.

You 'might' be able to get around the 2.4Ghz saturation if you have multiple AP and then spread your channels around to dedicate your SteamLink to a specific channel.

But if you live in an apartment complex, there's not much you can do if the upstairs bachelor is using the microwave 24x7 to make ramen.

[Mithris]

So, I moved my router, NAS, and modem to my bedroom and now the steamlink is on the 5GHz network and my PC is hardwired. Apparently, this worked as the stuttering/lag spikes are gone. I think most of my devices that were hardwired have wifi, so its cool, I just need to get some tape to cover up all these new blinking lights in my room.

[Greg]

You 'might' be able to get around the 2.4Ghz saturation if you have multiple AP and then spread your channels around to dedicate your SteamLink to a specific channel.

You might be able to do that and achieve a stable wireless connection but I do not think you would achieve acceptable streaming performance. You also generally need to keep all of the AP's on the same channel if they're WiFi bridges like that.

If you have that much interference you're going to be causing errors in each hop of the transmission and because of how the APs are connected the errors are going to be magnified greatly on the receiving end the farther down the chain they occur.

Apparently, this worked as the stuttering/lag spikes are gone.

The worst kind of interference is intermittent interference. The fact that proximity solved all your problems supports this entirely. You might have some luck trying to figure out what piece of electronics would/could correspond to your interference.

[2NE1]

Greg! Are you using it in the same room as the router? I got a tp-link wdr4300 and I speedtest with my phone (htc one m9) on wireless n in the same room and got 66.27 mbps down 3.31 up.
Will it not work because it only supports IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n and not ac? (getting confused on the 5GHZ lingo)

[Greg]

Thats a speed test of your internet connection, not your local network speed. You can right click on the wireless icon on your computer and view the "status" of your WiFi. It should tell you the connection speed there.

My link is in the same room as my router although I commonly use my laptop well across on the other side of the house as a streaming client.

I have tried to stream with wireless-N routers and I truly would not recommend it. I recently bought an old laptop that had a wireless-N network card in it and the streaming experience was absolutely terrible until I picked up a $20 wireless-AC half-mini PCIe card.

You could try lowering the maximum bit rate and see if that helps if you're still encountering issues.

[2NE1]

Ah, I have no other wireless N compabile device other then my phone, I tried another app called "wifi speed test" that let me test between my ethernet connected computer through wlan and got a link speed of 150 mbps, 103.77 up and 102.23 down mbit/s. Going to be getting another router soon so I'll just get an AC and try with that, any recs that are cheaper then your ASUS? $100-150~ CAD? Maybe try out a powerline from bestbuy and test it out. Thanks!

[Greg]

Asus RT-AC66U runs $100-$150 depending on where you buy it. Unfortunately your bandwidth only tells part of the story. Think about it like this: If streaming is using 35% of your routers total WiFi capacity how quickly do you think it will deal with errors compared to 2-5% of it's capacity?