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- QoS helps manage network traffic for better connection quality.
- Prioritizing devices and services can enhance online gaming, working from home, and smart home experiences.
- QoS configuration may reduce raw download speed, but may improve overall connection quality.
Technology has long been about simplifying complex and monotonous tasks, and as Wi-Fi routers continue to grow more refined, complex features become more accessible. Our home internet connections are a shared resource, whether you’re sharing 5G bandwidth with others in your area, or whether you have dozens of devices in your home and many people in your home trying to access the internet at the same time. Quality of Service (QoS) allows you to prioritize specific devices or services on your network to keep your connection quality high even when your connection is running close to its limit.
Configuring QoS can’t perform miracles, but it can make your connection feel faster, which can help if you work from home, play competitive online games, or just want to fully embrace smart home technology. The more devices you load your network with, the more trouble your internet will have to keep up, but luckily, setting your priorities with a QoS on a modern router can help a lot. Slow internet
No gigabit in your house? Get the most out of your connection
Even if you’ve upgraded to one of the best Wi-Fi routers with plenty of power to handle all your devices, the internet connection coming into your home may not be up to the challenge it faces there. While full duplex fiber connections can handle the needs of most homes with cheap bandwidth, there are still plenty of people on slower connections who can get completely fed up when everyone is at home surfing. Additionally, some ISPs may struggle to deliver their full speed during peak times, which is another way of saying that your connection quality may be at its worst when you want to use it the most.
Setting your QoS with your most important devices prioritized can keep them performing as expected, even when you’re maxing out your connection speed. For example, if your connection is closer to 15 Mbps, which is usually capable of streaming HD video comfortably, you may see a lot of buffering if you try to stream while scrolling through an endless queue of short videos. If you have large downloads for work, you can continue to work on another device while the download completes. However, this is a big deal for video games that can take hours to download on anything but the fastest connections around. Or, when it creates ping to the detriment of your performance.
4 Improve online gaming
When every millisecond counts
AmpliFi Alien allows QoS settings by individually labeling devices as normal, streaming or gaming.
If you play online games, especially more competitive games like Valorant or Fortnite, you want a connection with ping times that are low and stable. A gaming-optimized QoS will prioritize your connection to the gaming server, either by prioritizing your devices, or by identifying the gaming service and prioritizing that connection, as seen with some gaming routers. When you’re playing a match online, you don’t need a lot of bandwidth, but making sure your packets arrive on time with as little delay as possible can keep your gaming experience running smoothly.
While servers for popular games are optimized for lower-quality home internet connections, a good ping can mean fewer unregistered shots and deaths that feel more fair, so you can stop blaming the lag your online and start blaming the monitor and mouse when you lose – that is, unless you got one of the best gaming monitors or the best wireless gaming mouse.
3 Work from home appointments
Can you see my screen?
Many people have switched to working from home, making a stable internet connection at home even more important. You can set your QoS to prioritize your work computer to keep your connection running smoothly. While working from home may not seem that difficult, there are quite a few tasks that require a good connection. If, for example, you need to remotely log into your work computer using a VPN, a strong connection can keep it running smoothly. Also, if you need to attend a work meeting on Zoom, Teams or similar, a faster connection means clearer screen sharing and less time wondering if people can hear you.
If you find that your connection just isn’t strong enough in your recently converted home office, or you just want to be able to work from other locations around your home with a stable signal, getting one of the best networks Wi-Fi systems can help improve your coverage. Fortunately, many of these kits also include good QoS.
2 Online reservations
Save your precious upload speed
Many of us have switched to cloud backups for our phones and computers, which can take up quite a bit of bandwidth. Cloud backups can have a big impact on speed because many home internet connections offer faster download speeds than uploads. Even if your download speed is measured in the hundreds of megabits per second, your upload speed may be less than 10 Mbps. Upload speed is also used for things like streaming your game on Twitch and video chatting with friends.
Since many backups and updates happen when you plug in a device and leave it unattended, that means many of us are syncing cloud backups during peak times, right when we want to stream. Setting your QoS similarly affects upload speed, so you can make sure your gaming connection isn’t consumed by an iCloud backup.
1 Smart home fans
Modernize your home without sacrificing network performance
If you’re all wrapped up in smart home tech with bulbs, plugs, cameras, sensors, and more, you may find that your home network struggles with the sheer number of devices you’ve added to it. While smart home technology other than cameras will generally require very little data, the constant updates they require can affect response times and lead to an increase in average ping time, hurting your network’s responsiveness .
There are many things you can do besides enabling your QoS to improve your connectivity, such as creating a dedicated IoT network. For the most part, though, if you’ve got a dozen cameras around your house, you want them to have a solid connection as well. Fortunately, powerful routers like the TP-Link Archer BE800, as well as cheaper models like the Asus RT-AX88U Pro, have enough capacity for all of these devices, so prioritizing some of your devices doesn’t significantly affect usability. of others. .
Configure your router for stability, not speed
Different routers and software versions handle QoS features differently. Some simpler models will require you to configure devices individually at certain speeds, while others may offer simpler on/off configurations while removing some of the customization. However, others will allow you to set simple prioritization categories for devices, such as setting up a gamepad as a gaming device, an Apple TV as a streaming device, and your ThinkPad as a work device. However, others may simply have the ability to set individual devices as a higher priority to receive bandwidth.
When configuring your router, be sure to check for a specific QoS option in the application or web browser settings. If you are setting device priority, you may need to start with the list of connected devices. Before you get too aggressive with QoS features, you should make sure you really need them. If you have a very fast fiber connection, for example, you may not need to configure your QoS at all. While QoS can help a bit in such ideal scenarios, you’ll be splitting milliseconds.
One last thing to consider about QoS configuration is that it often leads to lower speeds. Out of the box, routers are most often configured to provide as much speed as possible, which means first-come, first-serve. When you enable QoS, you may see the raw download speed on your network slow down a bit, though normally not enough to affect usability. However, if you’re looking for maximum download speeds, your QoS may work against you a bit. For the most part, a measured approach to your QoS is the best way forward, prioritizing only the most important devices.
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