The Wifi Testing Thread

[Discussion]

Hi everyone,

I'm making this thread to hopefully pool everyones various tests using different routers and wifi bands.

First off, all of my tests are done with a wired desktop as a host and a wireless Macbook Pro running OSX Mavericks as the client.

Every test I did with b/g routers were barely playable in even the best test cases. Only games that aren't latency dependant (XCOM, Civ, etc) were playable.

However once I swapped to a full 5ghz band N router the experience greatly improved given the increase in bandwidth. Borderlands, a very busy game visually can run at 1080p 60FPS nearly flawlessly with only a few dips and minimal latency.

Realistically, in a working household full of Wifi devices I expect b/g routers to be pretty much useless given the extra in-house bandwidth taken up by avid Netflix / YouTube users.

I assume the majority of users are going to use Steam in-home streaming over Wifi, hopefully we can get a good knowledge base going to help Valve improve the experience.

[Sk@nkw0n]

@Mike - I had this problem back in the beta streaming from Linux, it was the router constantly searching for access points.

[Phonzo]

Had an opportunity to do some testing with some crappy ole ISP provided wireless gateways as I imagine some people will try to utilize them. Hardware results as follows

Host (i5 4690k / 8 gb ram / GTX 970)
Client (steam link)
All tests at 1920x1080 - 60 fps / Client set to Balanced (unless stated otherwise)

Games Tested:
Rocket League
Fallout 4
Wolf Among Us

First gateway and configuration - Hitron CGN3 - Wireless N - 2.4 Ghz

I think i just did this to see how terrible performance would be in the 2.4 Ghz spectrum and it was miserable. Utilized only Rocket League for this test and constant spikes with respect to performance resulting in hitching in the video including 4-5% packet loss. Was not playable even if dropping settings.

Second Test - Hitron CGN3 - Wireless N - 5 GHz
Not very many routers in the surrounding area running at 5 GHz so I found a channel that was empty (only other router was quite a ways away doubt it would have caused interference). Results were noticeably better but I think the "quality" of a ISP router began to really show through given there was intermediate packet loss of 0.2% - 1.5% throughout (depending on game play could remain at 0%). Interestingly changing resolution on client didn't reduce the packet loss though it did not occur as frequently; anyways some quick results

Rocket League - while some audio hitching was prevalent from time to time depending on the scope of the packet loss this would occasionally result in simply missing video with the game basically "freezing" on screen at key moments especially. Did not work for the type of game this is without leading to frustration

Fallout 4 - Occasional audio stutter but video remained relatively stable the entire time; though the way audio stutters can quickly annoy you especially during dialogue portions

Wolf Among Us - Similar as fallout 4; no issues with video performance but audio stutter did occur from time to time.

Actual latency between the device / input and display was all reasonable hanging within the range of 18-20 ms. I have a feeling that the issue wasn't necessarily wireless n or channel interference just simply that the router itself couldn't process it all fast enough. Dropping client resolution provided a reduction in frequency but did not eliminate the issue. Though i did not try it with Fast Settings this may have reduced the frequency of the above.

Final Test - Hitron CGNM - 2250 / Hitron CGN3AC
I'll keep this one short and simple; surprisingly this ISP provided gateway performs very well when running in Wireless AC (didn't test N assume it improved over the CGN3) with no noticeable streaming issues in any game outlined above. I was even able to set it to beautiful on the client side which increased display latency by a whole 1ms on average. If I didn't have my own hardware I'd probably been able to utilize this router and be quite content.

Hope this helps others researching.

[MasterDslay]

Big Picture Mode used to make wifi streaming experience HORRENDOUS, but I think Valve fixed that with a recent beta update earlier this year. Now it's actually a little better than Non-BPM.

My specs:

Desktop:

Windows 10 Pro

Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83 GHz

8 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2 GB

Netgear N150 WNA1000M wifi adapter

Laptop:

Windows 10 Home

Intel Core i3 5010-U @ 2.10 GHz

6 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 SDRAM

Intel HD Graphics 5500 1 GB

Router:

Zyxel C1100Z

Controller:

Steam Controller

In-Home Streaming Settings:

Host:

Hardware Encoding Enabled with NVFBC

Automatically Adjusted Resolution

Automatic Number of Encoding Threads

Network Traffic Prioritization Enabled

Client:

Display Resolution

Balanced Quality

Automatic Bandwidth Limit

Stereo Sound

Hardware Decoding Enabled

Results:

Running in BPM - pretty much flawless, consistent 60 fps in most games (Crysis 1, Half-Life 2, etc.); for some reason, Half-Life 2: Update crashes the host system (in my case, my desktop) - original HL2 does not do this. Occasionally the controller input will lag, but that's rectifiable by pausing the game and bringing up BPM, then returning to the game. Overall, pretty good experience over wifi.

[Dragola]

Host: Windows 7- FX-8350, Gtx 970, 8GB, Ethernet
Client: Windows7- i3 M380, Integrated Graphics, 6GB, Wireless (N card)
Router: D-Link SmartBeam Wireless AC1200 Dual-Band Router (DIR-860L)
Performance:
Batman Arkham Knight; 60-40fps, playable with a freeze every few min
Transformer: War for Cybertron; 30fps (games fixed at this), playable but has weird video issues (like tiny lags)
Zombie Triolgy; 60fps, playable but has same issue as Transformers
Will continue to test when I get time.

[PizzaMan]

Tested with a ZTE ZXHN F660 Fiber Optic router. Did 2 test with different band with limits. With unlimited bandwidth , GTA V was playable with almost no latency but had some hickups on the network. ( it's like running watch dogs on 4GB Ram)
Second test was with 10mbps limited bandwidth. Performance was much improved. Almost no stuttering except for a few here and there.
Idk how but lowering bandwidth really improves the performance but costs image quality.

Client PC was a 7yr old Intel atom notebook with 1GB ram and 1.5Ghz processor.
Host PC was an Intel Q6600 quad core CPU with 2.5Ghz and 4GB ram with Nvidia GTX750.

On both tests it was playable.

[ReBoot]

I tried WLAN and it works like ass. Not exactly high latency, but frequent spikes making any game that needs quick reaction unplayable. I don't blame my Steam link, I live in a city and theres high congestion here.

[Owenhehe]

It's been a few years since anyone commented on this thread, but it really helped me solving my problem. So I will contribute as well. Tech has improved quite a bit since the last post. I believe remote play is very playable now.

I tried to remote play with my virgin media home hub 2(for anyone not in the UK, it is a standard carrier provided router) and nothing is playable. All games are laggy and ping is everywhere.

After reading some comment in this thread, I tried remote play again using a much better router (TP-Link AX50), oh my god, the performance is night and day. Not only display ping is lower, input ping is also lower, but the overall stability of ping is consistent. Now games play almost identical to playing on the host machine. So for anyone struggling with performance, a little investment in a good router may be worthwhile.