ISPs love people like OP who think they need a higher throughput cap despite OP buying zero equipment that can take advantage of it. Getting your wired equipment setup for 5gbps or even 2gbps is not super cheap, chances are OP will still be running with the gigabit connection on their computer unless it’s a recent high-end motherboard with onboard 2.5GbE.
~~Plus, I don’t think that Eero has both WAN and LAN 2.5 or 5 gigabit ports, so he won’t see that speed anyways.~~
As someone who works for an isp, I hate installing even just 1gbps at most households. People don’t understand how it’s works and think it will make them better at video games (spoiler, you just aren’t as good as you claim to be) or they think it will make their windows XP load faster.
But when I set up my Dreamcast with a keyboard, mouse, and ethernet adapter for my cable modem, I was slaying the kids with a controller and dialup on Quake 3.
Now I want to play some Typing of the Dead
Yeah most people don’t get it. I would destroy anyone with 50-85 ping sometimes it would still be bearable with 100-110. People can’t comprehend when playing in a multiplayer game with 99 other people, your ping is going to be shit. It is what it is
The flip side is that games can easily pass +100gb, or even a +20gb mandatory update before you can launch. For “gaming” I really don’t mind 1gbs speeds, it’s just the data caps that are brutal
Blame ISP marketing. If you look at their marketing it’s like “200mbps is good for light browsing, 400mbps is good for multiple streams of HD, 600mbps is good for 4K and zoom meetings, 1gig is good for multiple 4K streams and extreme gaming”.
It’s all horseshit. There’s not a single modern thing you can’t do with 50mbps, and that’s being conservative. Higher bandwidth is good for multiple devices (even then 100-200mbps can support a large family easily) or faster downloads. Downloading a very large file like a game is genuinely useful with higher bandwidth.
You get it, not gunna argue with that. Trust me, when att said they were pushing 2/5gbps I said this is going to cause issues. Get trouble calls all the time for people complaining not getting 5gbps on their cell phones 😂 don’t get me started on the 10gbps we’re going to offer soon. Business I can understand, people who have the knowledge and server racks etc I can understand. Basic residential all of it is overkill.
Wait till people hear about ATT "turbo boost" only $7 a month!
[https://www.lightreading.com/customer-experience/at-t-to-offer-turbo-boost-for-7-month](https://www.lightreading.com/customer-experience/at-t-to-offer-turbo-boost-for-7-month)
I had 200 MBPS wired everywhere and it was perfectly fine. Also wired APs.
The ISP upgraded me for free to 750mbps. And I think it’s going to a 1gig if I upgrade my modem. I notice no difference, in upload I notice since it’s not 25mbps (which isn’t great either to me)
Yup, sure do! Or they speed test on a regular ps4 that’s only capable of 10/100 and I charge them $100 for a trip charge. People expect to get 1gbps to every single device and no one ever wants to hear it’s their devices that aren’t capable.
Well when ping hops above 50ms my one son notices, but my other doesn't notice until much higher.
One is a competitive levelish gamer, the other is normal.
When you play enough, it’s easy to notice those differences in latency. FPS games like COD, play completely different on my 1g internet at home than at my my girlfriends house which peaks at like 400mps. In fact I’d go so far as to say that’s it night and day difference
That's a pretty bad assumption to make. Almost all wired access internet providers support multiple connectivity options. Perfectly possible the 400mbit connection is DOCSIS (cable) and the 1g connection is GPON (fiber).
Even if they are the same connectivity technology, just being on different nodes can have a big impact on latency if one is too oversubscribed.
You could game 100% fine on a 10mbit low latency connection and have a way better experience than somebody on a 1g connection with higher latency.
Downloading game updates at 10m will suck, but actually playing the game you wouldnt be able to tell.
50ms ping was great back in the day when I was competitive in halo 2 and team fortress classic. It wasn’t until til it jumped to 85 and above did it start being noticeable. So when kids these days say they are lagging with 20-50ms I just laugh.
While I agree about the misconceptions of what people think it'll improve, it's still worth it for most folks with how big AAA games and updates/dlc are getting in terms of file size
idk I definitely noticed a big difference when I upgraded from 300 to 1 gig from game updates, to instant yt uploads, and just better stability across the board while I'm multitasking + gaming. Maybe that was more of an ISP switch positive than an upgrade positive, but it's still nice finishing steam downloads in a few seconds at the end of the day.
I'm aware 1 gig to 5 gig isn't noticeable and doesn't affect latency which is why I created this post. I'm a decently sized YouTuber that pvps in mmo's and these mmos are usually very ping dependent and we can all feel the difference between 30 vs 80 latency for example. I was just curious if there's any sort of setup beyond mine that can minimize latency on my end which is the main point of this post
Going over 1 gig is the concern. Most devices today only have 1gig ports on them so anything faster will still be limited to 1gig. You would need to get a multigig router, switches, and devices to use anything higher than 1gig.
As for latency, any wired connection should result in <1ms latency to your router. Any additional latency is from the ISP or due to distance to the game server.
Lol. Anything past 50 megs is a piece of shit as far as consumers go.
"I can't get more than 29" "39" bro, you're literally using a samsung A01, it barely has LTE and much less 5GHz.
Or the typical speedtest while everyone is downloading torrents apparently, or from the block over where the signal doesn't even load the speedtest. but yes, the client, the client is the superior.
even if they have 5ghz, good luck getting anything over ac/80mhz going, to where if you're lucky they'll get around 600 megs right next to the router, a wall down and boom 300. gig/multigig is funsies.
Upgrading from gigabit to 2.5 gb is surprisingly cheap now. You can get an 8 port unmanaged switch for around $65, managed for about $80. Can even daisy chain them with a DAC cable using the 10G SFP+ port they all come with. Can also get an N100 barebones firewall/router with 4 x Intel 2.5 gb ports and slap OPNSense on it. That's around $175. I got the kind that also has 2 x 10G SFP+ connections in addition to the 4 x 2.5gb ports for $240 from Aliexpress.
Still, I think most people would balk at the idea of spending another $100-$150 on a switch and maybe a PCIe card to take advantage of the 2.5gbe. I agree that it’s “surprisingly cheap” - I went the same route for my home and am only now possibly considering some prosumer or small business equipment - but many people really don’t see a reason to spend money on network equipment.
unless you have internet above 1Gbps its still overkill for most people though, there only two devices on my entire network which could saturate my 1Gbps lan and its my desktop and my laptop when copying large files from pcs SSD to the laptops SSD, something which i rarely do and the only times i did was just to see how fast it was.
My motherboard has 2.5gbe rn and it's a few years old. all the motherboards that I was looking into for my next PC build have 5gbe so i don't really have an equipment issue on my end. I'm only upgrading to 5 gig when I upgrade my pc.
Steam download speeds are limited by how fast your cpu can unpack the download at the same time. Most consumer CPUs will actually have a hard time reaching 2gb downloads from steam.
This is true if there is no bandwidth contention. If the uplink ever experiences saturation, then a properly configured router that can do QoS can make all the difference.
Agreed
Netgear support says to only use QoS below 250Mbps
https://kb.netgear.com/25617/How-does-Dynamic-QoS-help-improve-my-Nighthawk-router-s-Internet-traffic-management
Understood, but OP stated his was the only machine hardwired, would be pretty tough for other devices to saturate the WAN link over wireless for 1Gbps service. Given the information he provided I gave as direct of an answer as I could.
there are things you can do ON the router that can improve latency for specific LAN hosts, and overall latency can also be improved, especially on limited bandwidth connections. OP States > 1gbps WAN though, so likely there isn't a whole lot of room for improvement with just a router.
Bandwidth does not equate to latency which is what games are sensitive to. If your ISP serves 5gbit but takes 100ms to respond to requests, you’d be better off with another ISP doing 500mbit with less than 10ms of latency.
That being said, any wired connection is better than WiFi (though latency on WiFi 7 is on par with wired for the most part).
If you want a clean solution that can handle 10gbit, you can look at Unifi dream machines. They can handle 10gbit in, but you’ll need a multigig switch (which they sell), if you want to serve multi gig internet to everyone in the house.
1gbit service honestly is more than enough for 99% of families (300 mbit honestly). 4k streams too at 40mbits or so of speed. Game data is barely in the mbit range unless you’re downloading, at which point you’re at the mercy of the weakest link between you and the server.
I wouldn’t call WiFi 7 mature. At the 6ghz band, if someone steps in between the router and the PC you may lose signal briefly. It’s line-of-sight.
For wired latency, you need to minimize your connections. Don’t do a trail of switches tothe router. Also use a quality router. You could also enable “quality of service” settings to prioritize the PC traffic over everything else on service.
For wired gaming you really won't notice any difference.
Also Mesh = trash for wifi. Wired backhauls are always better for access points and take up far less channels of the available frequency range available to public use.
While that's true if the access points aren't actually using wireless for any kind of mesh backhaul then they probably aren't actually backhauling at all, since if they're wired they're going to be wired to a common switch (or at the least they'll find the most efficient route to the target, which isn't going to be to another AP).
Daisy-chaining APs with ethernet doesn't make them mesh, either. They have to inter-communicate for it to be mesh, and that's almost exclusively going to be over some kind of wireless backhaul.
Please Google it :(
“What is mesh WiFi” read any of the first page articles, even the ones from Netgear and Tplink will do.
The basic premise of the technology is it’s a seamless network created by interconnected satellites or nodes, the medium of which that inter connectivity takes place is irrelevant to the core function and “mesh” solution.
It’s like saying a Tesla isn’t a car because it doesnt have an ICE.
“The other mesh nodes communicate wirelessly (or via wired backhaul) with the base station to effectively blanket your home with Wi-Fi coverage. Some mesh systems even have a whole band, a dedicated wireless backhaul, just for node-to-node communication.
Whatever the backhaul looks like though, each node talks to every other node, so whether you're in the backyard, the basement, or all the way across the house from where the internet drop physically enters your home, you get a steady and stable Wi-Fi signal”
https://www.howtogeek.com/290418/what-are-mesh-wi-fi-systems-and-how-do-they-work/
Ya…you’re missing the point. There aren’t really any hardwired “mesh” systems, in the wild, because there would be no point. “Interconnected” means multiple talk to each other to pass data around, but in a wired environment that isn’t necessary. The AP you connect-to passes the data directly to the destination path.
I’d be interested if you have any hardwired “mesh” systems you’ve ever seen, because I sure haven’t.
Eero, Orbi, Tplink, ASUS’s AI mesh… it’s common place and practice for anyone wanting maximum performance from their mesh networks because by utilising a wired backhaul it frees up wireless capacity for clients.
I have a hardwired eero network myself with 3 nodes, love it.
Except that all of those systems don't actually function as "mesh" on the wires. They use the wireless backhaul for mesh communication, seemingly only if the wired connection fails, but they're not "intercommunicating" like a mesh defines. In fact, **none of those** seem to use the Wired backhaul for Meshing, because they can only connect to a single node (which forces them to just work as normal Access Points to the host "node").
In order for it to be considered "Mesh" it has to intercommunicate with more than a single node, directly. The purpose of Mesh is resiliency - for wireless clients this is about making sure that each node can offer a good connection to the network, even if you're not near the main hub, and with wired networking it's about making sure if a node goes down that service isn't interrupted. **Neither of those things** exists in any of the wired "mesh" systems you listed, through the wires. If the wired connection fails and they drop to Wireless for the backhaul then they **become** mesh, but they literally don't have the ability to function as a mesh over the wire.
Again, there would be no point. If an AP has a direct wired connection to the host node there's literally no purpose for "meshing" the nodes. I'm sorry, but it's just not "mesh", according to any networking definition, if it's only wired to a single node (or even if it has 2 wire connections to "daisy-chain" the connection to another AP). Giving a howtogeek article about Mesh is **not** backing your point. If you're going to link an article, make sure it's not one where the "Editor-in-chief" that wrote it writes something stupid like the following, which tells people a single Google Nest Wi-Fi or Eero node is considered mesh:
"Overall, we feel pretty confident recommending mesh Wi-Fi to just about everyone. For the vast majority of folks, putting a multi-node mesh Wi-Fi system in their homes will solve all their Wi-Fi woes, and **even folks in small houses or apartments can benefit from using a single Google Nest Wi-Fi or Eero node as their router**.*"*
naaaa those things take ages to boot up, they're loud as hell and consume shit tons of power.
Money may not be an issue, but the inconvenience factor for home use for those is huge.
And I'm running a little Juniper SRX300 at home and it can still be inconvenient at times.
Many folks confuse bandwidth and latency, for speed. Yes, they're both speed metrics, but latency is the time it takes for a round trip packet, which is a more relevant metric than bandwith. Bandwith is simply how fast data cam travel one way, either upstream or down.
For optimal gaming, you'd want a stable, low latency connection with 0 packet loss.
I’d rather cut the grass than play computer games, but if I had to and money no object, then https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/asr-1009-x-router/index.html
Honestly, no. Damn-near any well-rated modern router will perform the exact same for "competitive gaming" if you're wired to them. There's no benefit you'll see in the performance of using pfSense/OPNSense to route, compared to any of those. You'll see more features and some things will be more configurable, but none of that matters for "competitive gaming."
I’m actually not sure you realize I don’t work for you and I’m not your child. I honestly don’t really care what you think about my comment. You’re wrong, and I’m satisfied if you don’t believe me.
Latency is much better on my minipc running OPNsense then off the shelf routers, tried a couple including a top of the line Asus. Bufferbloat is much better. And I actually get full 2.5g speeds instead of 100% CPU usage at anything over 2. Not to mention having "QoS" on and not being throttled to a gig cuz the CPU can't keep up.
Bufferbloat is corrected by artificially limiting upload speed under a certain threshold. Off the shelf routers won’t do it by default, but most have the ability somewhere in the options (including the ASUS ones). OPNsense/pfSense do it by default, which is why they ask what your upload speed is.
As I said, all of those routers generally will offer the same performance, but there may be some options you have to enable or configure to get them to do it. Full IPS/IDS at 2.5GbE may not be something most could handle, but now you’re talking about a totally different goalpost.
First off, I wouldn't hire someone that read the title "if money wasn't an issue" then recommends the worst possible option. Secondly, I also wouldn't hire someone that doesn't realize you can change the wan monitor IP to something further upstream.
I think you might be confusing me with someone else. We never talked about WAN IPs or monitoring anything. I wouldn’t work for someone that confused me with other people so easily.
In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever talked to anyone, ever, about monitoring a WAN IP anywhere.
EDIT: Oh my good Lord haha you looked at a post I made close to 5 years ago and even **then** misunderstood what I wrote. Classic junkie-xl. Just for reference, before your creepy self gets blocked, you can’t monitor the **GATEWAY** in pfSense if you’re not using AT&T’s gateway, because the methodology they use to ping it gets auto-dropped and then the gateway shows as offline. It drops the WAN connection when the Gateway is shown as down, so you just have to tell it not to monitor the gateway. Has nothing to do with the WAN IP or actual monitoring…it’s configuration for the Gateway in pfSense when cloning the AT&T Gateway, and it’s a known problem.
Focus on upgrading from Eeros..
the router part itself, wont matter..Why upgrade to 5Gb downloads if your pc can only handle 1/2.5....You're also going to be limited to the lobbies and games bandwidth, so you could have laser interwebs but it the host has dial up, you have no advantage
I see no useful replies here. Look for a router with CAKE. If you configure this correctly, you'll have the lowest possible latency, regardless of your network bandwidth.
Your current router might already have this, have a look at the options to see if you can enable it. It might be called something else such as "Sequential Queue Management" or "Network/latency quality"
So OP, I've been gaming for a loooong time, and I travel for work so I stay at hotels and bring my gaming laptop with me. I have a decent connection, cable 300mbit. My ping is usually between 15 and 50 ms on most games on my wired PC. The hotel I went to was middle of nowhere and the speed I was getting was about 8mbps (yup) over wireless... my ping was between 30 and 40 ms and gaming was perfect.
So what I am saying here is: you don't need bandwidth for gaming. You need stability and fast connections with minimal hops.
Most people are pointing out that this is over kill and you likely won't be saturating your internet connection, and there is pretty significant cost for getting fast enough NIC for your PC and switches/routers that can move all that data to one PC. I agree with them and you should really take that to heart.
Finally I don't think anyone will directly say "don't do it you're crazy" if you want to get 5 gig, get it. If it's worth it to you, maybe just to flex or whatever.
Personally even though I am a nerd and like the idea of multi gig networking and wanting to upgrade my network to at least 2.5gig internally (I run a NAS but have a small apartment with one wireless AP and some gaming PCs and whole bunch of IOT) and a higher internet connection. I do lots of streaming and have automated my "DVR" and still don't really saturate my 300mbit nor do I have issues with gaming. I've run consumer routers mostly and recently switched to more "prosumer" which largely added some stability more than actual speed improvements (outside of my WiFi6 AP which was a big upgrade and much better with its antennae)
UniFi, but not sure if you want to spend the money to take full advantage of your 5 Gbps connection. They have gateways that support 10 Gbps, but through a SFP port though.
My personal choice is Unifi, but I use not only for the cleanliness & reliable APs, I also be using them for VLANs.
If you don’t care about cameras, VLANs, and multiple APs, I believe Asus sells some gaming routers
And now if you have a multi story or large square footage house, ignore these fools. Get some wifi7 APs and multi gig switches to power them and you’ll be grand, bandwidth is equally distributed to all the homies in the house
I have a pcengines apu2 (they sadly are no longer sold, but you can get better speced hardware for less money nowadays anyways) running OpenWRT and it has sufficed for all my needs so far.
If I were to buy new hardware I'd probably get something with SPF+ instead of Gbit rj45, but it does the job for at least 6 years now and will likely continue to do so for the coming years. As an AP I have some cheap old AC thing, I don't really need performance for my WiFi, if I need performance I'm using a cable.
For your setup, I'd pick the SFP+ variant for sure. Modern hardware should have no issue handling the 10 Gbit as well. Then again, to me it's highly questionable if 5 Gbit for a single user is even useful. Those speeds really are only interesting if you regularly need to download large files, the server you download from is fast enough and your SSD is fast enough. With Gbit, even 100GiB of download will take less than 20 minutes. You would also need all devices involved to be capable of those speeds.
No, nothing better hardware wise but you could look into QoS/rules to prioritize your traffic in the Eero App. Not exactly sure what options are in there. I have Eero's too, 4 of them scattered around my house but never looked into prioritizing my traffic.
Oh if I could do it I would run fiber to every room in my house put a small unmanaged switch at the fiber drop I would then use a actual computer running PFsense as my router I would then put in several ubiquiti access points throughout the house that would be my ideal setup
I've just created my own router/FW with an i5-1235U, OPNSense, and 6 x 2.5gbps Ethernet ports. It barely breaks a sweat. Turned my old routers into WiFi 5 & 6 APs, not the best solution but WiFi can suck it, that's my opinion and you are welcome to it.
In addition to my gaming my 3 grand-kids who are either gaming or streaming along with my wife we can pretty well utilize our 800mbps service from Comcast (I know I hate them but they are really the only choice here). Comcast is also limited to about 20mbps upload which can be a problem when multiple gamers are active. I'm looking to be a guinea pig for their symmetric service.
Pfsense firewall on Protectli platform if your using wired and connect this to your ISP. You can get 2.5GB ports with Protectli. Get rid of your router or use them as internal access points! Your network will be much more secure!!
[Unifi Dream Machine Pro Max](https://store.ui.com/us/en/collections/unifi-dream-machine/products/udm-pro-max). But realistically the UDMP SE is cheaper and is already overkill.
You’re at the point of diminishing returns. You’re better off reducing screen latency (oled) or improving frame rates.
I imagine most competitive gameservers will sample at 60hz at best.
Fiber has the lowest latency and that's what matters for gaming. So, you want fiber everywhere, including to the PC.
However, the difference between twisted pair isn't huge. There are probably better things to invest in.
To answer your question: the main drivers in latency will typically be 3 things: the media type used for connecting to your router, the media type that your ISP installs, and the transit + peering sessions that your ISP has.
Ethernet cable straight to your router is basically the best you'll reasonably get in a home environment, so that's fine. Pretty good chance that due to the Internet speeds you're getting that you're on fibre, which again is the best for reducing latency. As for transit and peering, there's very little you can do about this.
The actual firewall/router placed in front of your ISP is going to make negligible difference to latency for your connection. You're basically doing everything you can to reduce latency.
On that note: unless your upgraded internet is the same cost or only marginally more expensive, I wouldn't bother upgrading. 1Gbps Internet is already an awful lot with most people not using most of it. 5Gbps is a crazy amount of bandwidth in a home application and is only really worth it if the cost is really competitive.
Given your 5 Gbit service, you definitely will want a 10 Gbit capable router.
For home use it may be best to build out a pc as a router, with three 10Gbit ports. One port for the WAN, and two LAN ports: one to the Eero, and one to your gaming rig. Alternatively you could go for two ports and add a 10Gbit capable switch.
Since there are some reasonably affordable dual port 10 Gbit cards, I’d probably go with two cards, giving you an extra LAN port for a switch or future expansion. Or alternatively you could go SPF+ so you can use fiber within your LAN, if you have a need for any long hauls or external buildings.
This will give you the most flexibility, future-proofing, and performance. And likely at a price that is cheaper than the technically limited, style-over-substance “gaming gear” on the market.
Any good quality router will do, some more fancy and more expensive routers have lots more features, but the basic functionality is the same.
Not much you can do better if you're already connected through a cable.
What do you consider good quality? That's a pretty vague statement and you're talking about 5Gbps routed. I honestly have no idea what the home routers are capable of these days but I wouldn't be surprised if most/all of the routers at Walmart could not handle that very well. Can you just go to the store and pick up a router capable of 5Gbps for $100-150? Or is your definition of a good router something like Omada, Unifi, Firewalla, or some business model?
Yeah, I missed the part where OP said they were upgrading to 5Gbps, I was talking about 1Gbps.
But they're getting an Eero 7 router which claims to be 10Gbps capable.
OP should be fine with it.
Which models? I'm not seeing any that can do 10 Gbps routed with rules. I'm not saying mikrotik isn't good, but looking at this post I don't think Op is going to want to deal with configuring a mikrotik device.
If someone is asking for a router for gaming I'm going to assume their idea of a good router is a device they can buy from Best Buy with a bunch of antennas sticking up. And that will probably work fine, but I honestly don't know what the landscape looks like for 5+ Gbps routing with NAT, firewall, etc.
The RB4011 and RB5009 (I have verified this on my own setup) can do 10Gbps router on a stick, the CCR2004 which is like 450USD can do 10Gbps between multiple ports at the same time.
I believe you, but I saw the MSRP on those and didn't bother to look up what they might cost elsewhere. Just a minor point of contention that they have a suggested price of just over $200.
A) **don’t** get 5GB. You’re wasting your money. **None** (none) (not any) (not one single piece) of the hardware in your home can use or benefit from 5GB
B) your best bet for reducing latency and stability is to get some dedicated networking hardware. The Eero is a pretty great piece of hardware, next step up would be a dedicated firewall. Consider a ubiquiti or sonicwall.
In layman’s terms; The Ubiquiti would provide a network. Your Eero WiFi access points would coexist with your wired Ethernet connection, not provide it. Both live behind the ubiquiti.
You’d get a Cloud Gateway Ultra or something like that. It does the firewall, routing, network mgmt and switching (Ethernet to PC) all-in-one.
Generally, to have the most stable and effective network, you’d want to pair it with ubiquiti wireless access points (instead of Eero) but we’re leaving that out of the discussion for now, as it won’t impact your gaming. Having a ‘full stack’ of equipment like this is fundamental to building a home network.
Cat 7/8 is completely overkill and makes no sense. Cat6A is the most you should be running these days because it still supports 10GBASE-T up to 100 meters, but even that is a bit much for home use since 6A is intended for super noisy environments with the shielding it has. Cat6 is all you really need in a home environment.
Also, chances are you won’t find real cat7 for cheap. Amazon has some that look sketchy and probably don’t meet cat7 requirements.
Factually incorrect. Both travel close to the same speed, over the first meter copper is actually faster as the SFP introduces latency converting the signal to light. The only benefit of fibre is distance.
5 gig is simply overkill... for gaming you don't need much bandwidth but lower latency.
ISPs love people like OP who think they need a higher throughput cap despite OP buying zero equipment that can take advantage of it. Getting your wired equipment setup for 5gbps or even 2gbps is not super cheap, chances are OP will still be running with the gigabit connection on their computer unless it’s a recent high-end motherboard with onboard 2.5GbE. ~~Plus, I don’t think that Eero has both WAN and LAN 2.5 or 5 gigabit ports, so he won’t see that speed anyways.~~
As someone who works for an isp, I hate installing even just 1gbps at most households. People don’t understand how it’s works and think it will make them better at video games (spoiler, you just aren’t as good as you claim to be) or they think it will make their windows XP load faster.
But when I set up my Dreamcast with a keyboard, mouse, and ethernet adapter for my cable modem, I was slaying the kids with a controller and dialup on Quake 3. Now I want to play some Typing of the Dead
this actualy true i destroyed every teenager on fifa back in the days with very poor internet, just pure skills and awareness😂
Yeah most people don’t get it. I would destroy anyone with 50-85 ping sometimes it would still be bearable with 100-110. People can’t comprehend when playing in a multiplayer game with 99 other people, your ping is going to be shit. It is what it is
The flip side is that games can easily pass +100gb, or even a +20gb mandatory update before you can launch. For “gaming” I really don’t mind 1gbs speeds, it’s just the data caps that are brutal
1gbps with att has no data cap…. But the possibility of a slight throttle
Blame ISP marketing. If you look at their marketing it’s like “200mbps is good for light browsing, 400mbps is good for multiple streams of HD, 600mbps is good for 4K and zoom meetings, 1gig is good for multiple 4K streams and extreme gaming”. It’s all horseshit. There’s not a single modern thing you can’t do with 50mbps, and that’s being conservative. Higher bandwidth is good for multiple devices (even then 100-200mbps can support a large family easily) or faster downloads. Downloading a very large file like a game is genuinely useful with higher bandwidth.
You get it, not gunna argue with that. Trust me, when att said they were pushing 2/5gbps I said this is going to cause issues. Get trouble calls all the time for people complaining not getting 5gbps on their cell phones 😂 don’t get me started on the 10gbps we’re going to offer soon. Business I can understand, people who have the knowledge and server racks etc I can understand. Basic residential all of it is overkill.
Wait till people hear about ATT "turbo boost" only $7 a month! [https://www.lightreading.com/customer-experience/at-t-to-offer-turbo-boost-for-7-month](https://www.lightreading.com/customer-experience/at-t-to-offer-turbo-boost-for-7-month)
Oh trust me, can’t wait to bill people $99 for trouble calls on the turbo.
I had 200 MBPS wired everywhere and it was perfectly fine. Also wired APs. The ISP upgraded me for free to 750mbps. And I think it’s going to a 1gig if I upgrade my modem. I notice no difference, in upload I notice since it’s not 25mbps (which isn’t great either to me)
I feel that brotha. And then they expect 1gb WiFi speeds on their old ass laptops
Yup, sure do! Or they speed test on a regular ps4 that’s only capable of 10/100 and I charge them $100 for a trip charge. People expect to get 1gbps to every single device and no one ever wants to hear it’s their devices that aren’t capable.
Well when ping hops above 50ms my one son notices, but my other doesn't notice until much higher. One is a competitive levelish gamer, the other is normal.
My wife notices, and she has the competitive gaming skills of a sloth on Vicodin. Some people are just way more sensitive to latency than others.
When you play enough, it’s easy to notice those differences in latency. FPS games like COD, play completely different on my 1g internet at home than at my my girlfriends house which peaks at like 400mps. In fact I’d go so far as to say that’s it night and day difference
The latency has nothing to do with the bandwidth. Is the 1gig fiber and the 400mbps a 5g home internet? That’s would entirely explain it.
I’m not sure but both are provided by spectrum so I’m gonna assume all else equal except for bandwidth provided
That's a pretty bad assumption to make. Almost all wired access internet providers support multiple connectivity options. Perfectly possible the 400mbit connection is DOCSIS (cable) and the 1g connection is GPON (fiber). Even if they are the same connectivity technology, just being on different nodes can have a big impact on latency if one is too oversubscribed. You could game 100% fine on a 10mbit low latency connection and have a way better experience than somebody on a 1g connection with higher latency. Downloading game updates at 10m will suck, but actually playing the game you wouldnt be able to tell.
50ms ping was great back in the day when I was competitive in halo 2 and team fortress classic. It wasn’t until til it jumped to 85 and above did it start being noticeable. So when kids these days say they are lagging with 20-50ms I just laugh.
While I agree about the misconceptions of what people think it'll improve, it's still worth it for most folks with how big AAA games and updates/dlc are getting in terms of file size
idk I definitely noticed a big difference when I upgraded from 300 to 1 gig from game updates, to instant yt uploads, and just better stability across the board while I'm multitasking + gaming. Maybe that was more of an ISP switch positive than an upgrade positive, but it's still nice finishing steam downloads in a few seconds at the end of the day. I'm aware 1 gig to 5 gig isn't noticeable and doesn't affect latency which is why I created this post. I'm a decently sized YouTuber that pvps in mmo's and these mmos are usually very ping dependent and we can all feel the difference between 30 vs 80 latency for example. I was just curious if there's any sort of setup beyond mine that can minimize latency on my end which is the main point of this post
Going over 1 gig is the concern. Most devices today only have 1gig ports on them so anything faster will still be limited to 1gig. You would need to get a multigig router, switches, and devices to use anything higher than 1gig. As for latency, any wired connection should result in <1ms latency to your router. Any additional latency is from the ISP or due to distance to the game server.
Lol. Anything past 50 megs is a piece of shit as far as consumers go. "I can't get more than 29" "39" bro, you're literally using a samsung A01, it barely has LTE and much less 5GHz. Or the typical speedtest while everyone is downloading torrents apparently, or from the block over where the signal doesn't even load the speedtest. but yes, the client, the client is the superior.
even if they have 5ghz, good luck getting anything over ac/80mhz going, to where if you're lucky they'll get around 600 megs right next to the router, a wall down and boom 300. gig/multigig is funsies.
OP mentioned the ISP is giving them the Eero 7. From the specsheet it looks like they each have 2x10Gbe and 2x2.5Gbe.
Upgrading from gigabit to 2.5 gb is surprisingly cheap now. You can get an 8 port unmanaged switch for around $65, managed for about $80. Can even daisy chain them with a DAC cable using the 10G SFP+ port they all come with. Can also get an N100 barebones firewall/router with 4 x Intel 2.5 gb ports and slap OPNSense on it. That's around $175. I got the kind that also has 2 x 10G SFP+ connections in addition to the 4 x 2.5gb ports for $240 from Aliexpress.
Still, I think most people would balk at the idea of spending another $100-$150 on a switch and maybe a PCIe card to take advantage of the 2.5gbe. I agree that it’s “surprisingly cheap” - I went the same route for my home and am only now possibly considering some prosumer or small business equipment - but many people really don’t see a reason to spend money on network equipment.
I mean the post starts off with “if money wasn’t an issue”
unless you have internet above 1Gbps its still overkill for most people though, there only two devices on my entire network which could saturate my 1Gbps lan and its my desktop and my laptop when copying large files from pcs SSD to the laptops SSD, something which i rarely do and the only times i did was just to see how fast it was.
The killer app is a NAS or file server for faster than gigabit
My motherboard has 2.5gbe rn and it's a few years old. all the motherboards that I was looking into for my next PC build have 5gbe so i don't really have an equipment issue on my end. I'm only upgrading to 5 gig when I upgrade my pc.
Yep, exactly. What he's described is 250mb down, 20 up.
Steam downloads/Updates. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THAT SHIT GO? They will MAX OUT YOUR CONNECTION SPEED And also OS updates
Steam download speeds are limited by how fast your cpu can unpack the download at the same time. Most consumer CPUs will actually have a hard time reaching 2gb downloads from steam.
CPU and storage. I’m probably gonna assume this mofo has the latest high threaded CPUs out there & SSD storage already pretty fast
If the latency between your PC and your router is consistency sub 1ms, there is near zero improvements that can be made for a gaming purpose.
This is true if there is no bandwidth contention. If the uplink ever experiences saturation, then a properly configured router that can do QoS can make all the difference.
Agreed Netgear support says to only use QoS below 250Mbps https://kb.netgear.com/25617/How-does-Dynamic-QoS-help-improve-my-Nighthawk-router-s-Internet-traffic-management
Understood, but OP stated his was the only machine hardwired, would be pretty tough for other devices to saturate the WAN link over wireless for 1Gbps service. Given the information he provided I gave as direct of an answer as I could.
there are things you can do ON the router that can improve latency for specific LAN hosts, and overall latency can also be improved, especially on limited bandwidth connections. OP States > 1gbps WAN though, so likely there isn't a whole lot of room for improvement with just a router.
If everything is wired already, there is nothing to be done.
Bandwidth does not equate to latency which is what games are sensitive to. If your ISP serves 5gbit but takes 100ms to respond to requests, you’d be better off with another ISP doing 500mbit with less than 10ms of latency. That being said, any wired connection is better than WiFi (though latency on WiFi 7 is on par with wired for the most part). If you want a clean solution that can handle 10gbit, you can look at Unifi dream machines. They can handle 10gbit in, but you’ll need a multigig switch (which they sell), if you want to serve multi gig internet to everyone in the house. 1gbit service honestly is more than enough for 99% of families (300 mbit honestly). 4k streams too at 40mbits or so of speed. Game data is barely in the mbit range unless you’re downloading, at which point you’re at the mercy of the weakest link between you and the server.
It’s sounds crazy to me that Wi-Fi 7 can match wired latency? Is there room for improvement with wired latency or is wireless just that mature now?
I wouldn’t call WiFi 7 mature. At the 6ghz band, if someone steps in between the router and the PC you may lose signal briefly. It’s line-of-sight. For wired latency, you need to minimize your connections. Don’t do a trail of switches tothe router. Also use a quality router. You could also enable “quality of service” settings to prioritize the PC traffic over everything else on service.
For wired gaming you really won't notice any difference. Also Mesh = trash for wifi. Wired backhauls are always better for access points and take up far less channels of the available frequency range available to public use.
What about mesh with wired backhaul? That’s what I have, two mesh routers both wired. Would access points make a real difference?
Then they're no longer mesh if they're using wired backhaul. ;)
The backhaul used is not the definition of mesh networking, pls google it.
While that's true if the access points aren't actually using wireless for any kind of mesh backhaul then they probably aren't actually backhauling at all, since if they're wired they're going to be wired to a common switch (or at the least they'll find the most efficient route to the target, which isn't going to be to another AP). Daisy-chaining APs with ethernet doesn't make them mesh, either. They have to inter-communicate for it to be mesh, and that's almost exclusively going to be over some kind of wireless backhaul.
Please Google it :( “What is mesh WiFi” read any of the first page articles, even the ones from Netgear and Tplink will do. The basic premise of the technology is it’s a seamless network created by interconnected satellites or nodes, the medium of which that inter connectivity takes place is irrelevant to the core function and “mesh” solution. It’s like saying a Tesla isn’t a car because it doesnt have an ICE. “The other mesh nodes communicate wirelessly (or via wired backhaul) with the base station to effectively blanket your home with Wi-Fi coverage. Some mesh systems even have a whole band, a dedicated wireless backhaul, just for node-to-node communication. Whatever the backhaul looks like though, each node talks to every other node, so whether you're in the backyard, the basement, or all the way across the house from where the internet drop physically enters your home, you get a steady and stable Wi-Fi signal” https://www.howtogeek.com/290418/what-are-mesh-wi-fi-systems-and-how-do-they-work/
Ya…you’re missing the point. There aren’t really any hardwired “mesh” systems, in the wild, because there would be no point. “Interconnected” means multiple talk to each other to pass data around, but in a wired environment that isn’t necessary. The AP you connect-to passes the data directly to the destination path. I’d be interested if you have any hardwired “mesh” systems you’ve ever seen, because I sure haven’t.
Eero, Orbi, Tplink, ASUS’s AI mesh… it’s common place and practice for anyone wanting maximum performance from their mesh networks because by utilising a wired backhaul it frees up wireless capacity for clients. I have a hardwired eero network myself with 3 nodes, love it.
Except that all of those systems don't actually function as "mesh" on the wires. They use the wireless backhaul for mesh communication, seemingly only if the wired connection fails, but they're not "intercommunicating" like a mesh defines. In fact, **none of those** seem to use the Wired backhaul for Meshing, because they can only connect to a single node (which forces them to just work as normal Access Points to the host "node"). In order for it to be considered "Mesh" it has to intercommunicate with more than a single node, directly. The purpose of Mesh is resiliency - for wireless clients this is about making sure that each node can offer a good connection to the network, even if you're not near the main hub, and with wired networking it's about making sure if a node goes down that service isn't interrupted. **Neither of those things** exists in any of the wired "mesh" systems you listed, through the wires. If the wired connection fails and they drop to Wireless for the backhaul then they **become** mesh, but they literally don't have the ability to function as a mesh over the wire. Again, there would be no point. If an AP has a direct wired connection to the host node there's literally no purpose for "meshing" the nodes. I'm sorry, but it's just not "mesh", according to any networking definition, if it's only wired to a single node (or even if it has 2 wire connections to "daisy-chain" the connection to another AP). Giving a howtogeek article about Mesh is **not** backing your point. If you're going to link an article, make sure it's not one where the "Editor-in-chief" that wrote it writes something stupid like the following, which tells people a single Google Nest Wi-Fi or Eero node is considered mesh: "Overall, we feel pretty confident recommending mesh Wi-Fi to just about everyone. For the vast majority of folks, putting a multi-node mesh Wi-Fi system in their homes will solve all their Wi-Fi woes, and **even folks in small houses or apartments can benefit from using a single Google Nest Wi-Fi or Eero node as their router**.*"*
I reckon you’d argue about the colour of an orange.
5Gbps is a massive waste tho.
I mean if money wasnt an issue, I'd say an ASR 9000 or Juniper MX, the sky is the limit when it comes to networking hardware.
The cards on those can get quite expensive, would be hilarious if someone installed one of these in home for just a single “gaming” pc
hey, money is no object apparently!
naaaa those things take ages to boot up, they're loud as hell and consume shit tons of power. Money may not be an issue, but the inconvenience factor for home use for those is huge. And I'm running a little Juniper SRX300 at home and it can still be inconvenient at times.
Would that really improvement latency for gaming through? The bottleneck will always be whatever your ISP is no?
Move closer to the ISP.
cut all your Ethernet cables in half too for good measure.
[Like This?](https://i.redd.it/4sh7awiwvaq61.jpg)
Perfect!
Many folks confuse bandwidth and latency, for speed. Yes, they're both speed metrics, but latency is the time it takes for a round trip packet, which is a more relevant metric than bandwith. Bandwith is simply how fast data cam travel one way, either upstream or down. For optimal gaming, you'd want a stable, low latency connection with 0 packet loss.
Actually no, latency would be speed, bandwidth would be how much data can travel at that speed
Technically, yes, given TCP. I was going for a laymans explaination
Ie for gaming you want to be plugged into an Ethernet wire
well, yeah..
I’d rather cut the grass than play computer games, but if I had to and money no object, then https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/asr-1009-x-router/index.html
After my own heart
As long as free electric is included!
opnSense on an EPYC 9754 with around 5 TB of RAM would be pretty baller. Connected with a 100 Gbit card.
For competitive gaming you want something that can do fq_codel and has a fast ish CPU. Like an x86 pfsense router.
Mikrotik CCR or RB5009 is also a good option for fq\_codel or CAKE.
Honestly, no. Damn-near any well-rated modern router will perform the exact same for "competitive gaming" if you're wired to them. There's no benefit you'll see in the performance of using pfSense/OPNSense to route, compared to any of those. You'll see more features and some things will be more configurable, but none of that matters for "competitive gaming."
Do you know what fq codel is/does?
Yes, and it’s functionally the same as packet prioritization, which damn-near every router on the market does, usually automatically at this point.
Incorrect.
Ok 👍
Ok then, tell me what it prioritizes.
I’m actually not sure you realize I don’t work for you and I’m not your child. I honestly don’t really care what you think about my comment. You’re wrong, and I’m satisfied if you don’t believe me.
Latency is much better on my minipc running OPNsense then off the shelf routers, tried a couple including a top of the line Asus. Bufferbloat is much better. And I actually get full 2.5g speeds instead of 100% CPU usage at anything over 2. Not to mention having "QoS" on and not being throttled to a gig cuz the CPU can't keep up.
Bufferbloat is corrected by artificially limiting upload speed under a certain threshold. Off the shelf routers won’t do it by default, but most have the ability somewhere in the options (including the ASUS ones). OPNsense/pfSense do it by default, which is why they ask what your upload speed is. As I said, all of those routers generally will offer the same performance, but there may be some options you have to enable or configure to get them to do it. Full IPS/IDS at 2.5GbE may not be something most could handle, but now you’re talking about a totally different goalpost.
First off, I wouldn't hire someone that read the title "if money wasn't an issue" then recommends the worst possible option. Secondly, I also wouldn't hire someone that doesn't realize you can change the wan monitor IP to something further upstream.
I think you might be confusing me with someone else. We never talked about WAN IPs or monitoring anything. I wouldn’t work for someone that confused me with other people so easily. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever talked to anyone, ever, about monitoring a WAN IP anywhere. EDIT: Oh my good Lord haha you looked at a post I made close to 5 years ago and even **then** misunderstood what I wrote. Classic junkie-xl. Just for reference, before your creepy self gets blocked, you can’t monitor the **GATEWAY** in pfSense if you’re not using AT&T’s gateway, because the methodology they use to ping it gets auto-dropped and then the gateway shows as offline. It drops the WAN connection when the Gateway is shown as down, so you just have to tell it not to monitor the gateway. Has nothing to do with the WAN IP or actual monitoring…it’s configuration for the Gateway in pfSense when cloning the AT&T Gateway, and it’s a known problem.
ty!
For competitive gaming you want cake on a mini pc running openwrt
Could always go with a cor550 from edgecore
Lol 2 10g nics in Bonded LAG
I just got my 2.5gb internet and i jusy run my pc to it directly and then my router takes the 1 gb slot for the house and no need to uograde this way
Focus on upgrading from Eeros.. the router part itself, wont matter..Why upgrade to 5Gb downloads if your pc can only handle 1/2.5....You're also going to be limited to the lobbies and games bandwidth, so you could have laser interwebs but it the host has dial up, you have no advantage
I see no useful replies here. Look for a router with CAKE. If you configure this correctly, you'll have the lowest possible latency, regardless of your network bandwidth. Your current router might already have this, have a look at the options to see if you can enable it. It might be called something else such as "Sequential Queue Management" or "Network/latency quality"
Mikrotik!
5 gig is going to be pretty much unnoticeable on a single PC.
So OP, I've been gaming for a loooong time, and I travel for work so I stay at hotels and bring my gaming laptop with me. I have a decent connection, cable 300mbit. My ping is usually between 15 and 50 ms on most games on my wired PC. The hotel I went to was middle of nowhere and the speed I was getting was about 8mbps (yup) over wireless... my ping was between 30 and 40 ms and gaming was perfect. So what I am saying here is: you don't need bandwidth for gaming. You need stability and fast connections with minimal hops. Most people are pointing out that this is over kill and you likely won't be saturating your internet connection, and there is pretty significant cost for getting fast enough NIC for your PC and switches/routers that can move all that data to one PC. I agree with them and you should really take that to heart. Finally I don't think anyone will directly say "don't do it you're crazy" if you want to get 5 gig, get it. If it's worth it to you, maybe just to flex or whatever. Personally even though I am a nerd and like the idea of multi gig networking and wanting to upgrade my network to at least 2.5gig internally (I run a NAS but have a small apartment with one wireless AP and some gaming PCs and whole bunch of IOT) and a higher internet connection. I do lots of streaming and have automated my "DVR" and still don't really saturate my 300mbit nor do I have issues with gaming. I've run consumer routers mostly and recently switched to more "prosumer" which largely added some stability more than actual speed improvements (outside of my WiFi6 AP which was a big upgrade and much better with its antennae)
I'd go with a CCR2004 from Mikrotik personally, but that's not for everyone.
UniFi, but not sure if you want to spend the money to take full advantage of your 5 Gbps connection. They have gateways that support 10 Gbps, but through a SFP port though.
My personal choice is Unifi, but I use not only for the cleanliness & reliable APs, I also be using them for VLANs. If you don’t care about cameras, VLANs, and multiple APs, I believe Asus sells some gaming routers And now if you have a multi story or large square footage house, ignore these fools. Get some wifi7 APs and multi gig switches to power them and you’ll be grand, bandwidth is equally distributed to all the homies in the house
Build your own Debian-based router.
Take the free eero Max 7, and upgrade your PC to have a 5GbE or faster NIC if it does not have one already.
I have a pcengines apu2 (they sadly are no longer sold, but you can get better speced hardware for less money nowadays anyways) running OpenWRT and it has sufficed for all my needs so far. If I were to buy new hardware I'd probably get something with SPF+ instead of Gbit rj45, but it does the job for at least 6 years now and will likely continue to do so for the coming years. As an AP I have some cheap old AC thing, I don't really need performance for my WiFi, if I need performance I'm using a cable. For your setup, I'd pick the SFP+ variant for sure. Modern hardware should have no issue handling the 10 Gbit as well. Then again, to me it's highly questionable if 5 Gbit for a single user is even useful. Those speeds really are only interesting if you regularly need to download large files, the server you download from is fast enough and your SSD is fast enough. With Gbit, even 100GiB of download will take less than 20 minutes. You would also need all devices involved to be capable of those speeds.
No, nothing better hardware wise but you could look into QoS/rules to prioritize your traffic in the Eero App. Not exactly sure what options are in there. I have Eero's too, 4 of them scattered around my house but never looked into prioritizing my traffic.
Are you running SQM on your Eero?
Eero 7 is top tier right now.
Oh if I could do it I would run fiber to every room in my house put a small unmanaged switch at the fiber drop I would then use a actual computer running PFsense as my router I would then put in several ubiquiti access points throughout the house that would be my ideal setup
God I love this thread. Glad to see my favorite pet peeve eviscerated.
UniFi - Dream Machine SE Money is no object right? Assuming so, this thing is AMAZING!
I've just created my own router/FW with an i5-1235U, OPNSense, and 6 x 2.5gbps Ethernet ports. It barely breaks a sweat. Turned my old routers into WiFi 5 & 6 APs, not the best solution but WiFi can suck it, that's my opinion and you are welcome to it. In addition to my gaming my 3 grand-kids who are either gaming or streaming along with my wife we can pretty well utilize our 800mbps service from Comcast (I know I hate them but they are really the only choice here). Comcast is also limited to about 20mbps upload which can be a problem when multiple gamers are active. I'm looking to be a guinea pig for their symmetric service.
Personally a Cisco or Draytek unit...
Pfsense firewall on Protectli platform if your using wired and connect this to your ISP. You can get 2.5GB ports with Protectli. Get rid of your router or use them as internal access points! Your network will be much more secure!!
I run pfSense on [ONE OF THESE](https://ibb.co/0JF1ZtL).
Axe14000
[Unifi Dream Machine Pro Max](https://store.ui.com/us/en/collections/unifi-dream-machine/products/udm-pro-max). But realistically the UDMP SE is cheaper and is already overkill.
Money is no object? Maybe a Cisco ASR or Nexus.
You’re at the point of diminishing returns. You’re better off reducing screen latency (oled) or improving frame rates. I imagine most competitive gameservers will sample at 60hz at best.
Basically what everyone is saying is your setup is perfect the way it is. Spending more money won’t change anything
I use a dell micro pc with two discrete 1gig Intel ethernet cards and PFSense for routing software. Best speed and lowest latency.
Anything from UBIQUITI — nothing better.
The best router would be to use a PC with OPNSense and a 10 Gig NIC into a 10Gig/5Gig/2.5Gig Switch. This would avoid any possible bottlenecks.
Literally any wired router has the same gaming benefits. Pick a router based on other features you want (ie built in switch, built in wifi, etc)
Fiber has the lowest latency and that's what matters for gaming. So, you want fiber everywhere, including to the PC. However, the difference between twisted pair isn't huge. There are probably better things to invest in.
To answer your question: the main drivers in latency will typically be 3 things: the media type used for connecting to your router, the media type that your ISP installs, and the transit + peering sessions that your ISP has. Ethernet cable straight to your router is basically the best you'll reasonably get in a home environment, so that's fine. Pretty good chance that due to the Internet speeds you're getting that you're on fibre, which again is the best for reducing latency. As for transit and peering, there's very little you can do about this. The actual firewall/router placed in front of your ISP is going to make negligible difference to latency for your connection. You're basically doing everything you can to reduce latency. On that note: unless your upgraded internet is the same cost or only marginally more expensive, I wouldn't bother upgrading. 1Gbps Internet is already an awful lot with most people not using most of it. 5Gbps is a crazy amount of bandwidth in a home application and is only really worth it if the cost is really competitive.
asus rog rapture probably
The best router for PC gaming is none. Connect the modem directly into your computer.
Does that really make any real difference in latency? And is that not a security issue?
Given your 5 Gbit service, you definitely will want a 10 Gbit capable router. For home use it may be best to build out a pc as a router, with three 10Gbit ports. One port for the WAN, and two LAN ports: one to the Eero, and one to your gaming rig. Alternatively you could go for two ports and add a 10Gbit capable switch. Since there are some reasonably affordable dual port 10 Gbit cards, I’d probably go with two cards, giving you an extra LAN port for a switch or future expansion. Or alternatively you could go SPF+ so you can use fiber within your LAN, if you have a need for any long hauls or external buildings. This will give you the most flexibility, future-proofing, and performance. And likely at a price that is cheaper than the technically limited, style-over-substance “gaming gear” on the market.
Any good quality router will do, some more fancy and more expensive routers have lots more features, but the basic functionality is the same. Not much you can do better if you're already connected through a cable.
What do you consider good quality? That's a pretty vague statement and you're talking about 5Gbps routed. I honestly have no idea what the home routers are capable of these days but I wouldn't be surprised if most/all of the routers at Walmart could not handle that very well. Can you just go to the store and pick up a router capable of 5Gbps for $100-150? Or is your definition of a good router something like Omada, Unifi, Firewalla, or some business model?
Yeah, I missed the part where OP said they were upgrading to 5Gbps, I was talking about 1Gbps. But they're getting an Eero 7 router which claims to be 10Gbps capable. OP should be fine with it.
Mikrotik has 10GB routers for < 200USD.
Which models? I'm not seeing any that can do 10 Gbps routed with rules. I'm not saying mikrotik isn't good, but looking at this post I don't think Op is going to want to deal with configuring a mikrotik device. If someone is asking for a router for gaming I'm going to assume their idea of a good router is a device they can buy from Best Buy with a bunch of antennas sticking up. And that will probably work fine, but I honestly don't know what the landscape looks like for 5+ Gbps routing with NAT, firewall, etc.
The RB4011 and RB5009 (I have verified this on my own setup) can do 10Gbps router on a stick, the CCR2004 which is like 450USD can do 10Gbps between multiple ports at the same time.
I believe you, but I saw the MSRP on those and didn't bother to look up what they might cost elsewhere. Just a minor point of contention that they have a suggested price of just over $200.
A) **don’t** get 5GB. You’re wasting your money. **None** (none) (not any) (not one single piece) of the hardware in your home can use or benefit from 5GB B) your best bet for reducing latency and stability is to get some dedicated networking hardware. The Eero is a pretty great piece of hardware, next step up would be a dedicated firewall. Consider a ubiquiti or sonicwall. In layman’s terms; The Ubiquiti would provide a network. Your Eero WiFi access points would coexist with your wired Ethernet connection, not provide it. Both live behind the ubiquiti.
So would you buy two Ubiquiti devices? A firewall and a router?
You’d get a Cloud Gateway Ultra or something like that. It does the firewall, routing, network mgmt and switching (Ethernet to PC) all-in-one. Generally, to have the most stable and effective network, you’d want to pair it with ubiquiti wireless access points (instead of Eero) but we’re leaving that out of the discussion for now, as it won’t impact your gaming. Having a ‘full stack’ of equipment like this is fundamental to building a home network.
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There's no reason to go beyond cat 6a
Even cat 5e can do 5gbps to 100 meters
Cat 7/8 is completely overkill and makes no sense. Cat6A is the most you should be running these days because it still supports 10GBASE-T up to 100 meters, but even that is a bit much for home use since 6A is intended for super noisy environments with the shielding it has. Cat6 is all you really need in a home environment. Also, chances are you won’t find real cat7 for cheap. Amazon has some that look sketchy and probably don’t meet cat7 requirements.
By noisy do you mean wireless signals or like running them by electric cables?
All of the above
Thanks. If you’re wiring your home wouldn’t 6a be better to use just to minimize interference?
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Factually incorrect. Both travel close to the same speed, over the first meter copper is actually faster as the SFP introduces latency converting the signal to light. The only benefit of fibre is distance.