1. #1
    Scarab Lord Djinni's Avatar
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    PS3 is hogging all my bandwidth

    hey,
    So a friend of mine brought her son over to stay for a few days, the trouble is his PS3 literally eats up all of my bandwidth... which really sucks because normally we can do LAN parties and all sorts without having any problems.
    Obviously i'm busy during raid times which is when I need it, and naturally when he's most likely to be playing on the PS3.

    So short of shelling out £50-£100 for a QoS router I'd only need for another 4 days, is there any way to throttle the PS3? I don't need to make his games suck... I just need to be able to talk on Vent and have people still hear me within the same 2 seconds.... Currently if I talk on vent while he's on the PS3 they don't hear me for a good 10-20seconds, and that's when I'm lucky. (not even going to go into what I hear, because it's impossible to understand what anyone says)
    (Getting my latency in WoW down from 1-4kms would be really cool too!)

    My current router is a standard Sky Home Broadband one. And all I can do with it is lock the PS3 out completely.


    Some numbers:

    Normal Latency:
    WoW: 35-39ms
    Vent: 20-50ms

    With PS3:
    WoW: 1000-4000ms
    Vent: 10,000ms

  2. #2
    Latency numbers that high don't suggest bandwidth congestion, they suggest packet loss (which is probably getting caused by interference).

    Try lining straight into your router via ethernet if you're currently wireless to test the theory. Also, try testing if it's only when his wireless PS3 controller is on. If any of those two things lead to the issue, log into your router's homepage and manually select a wireless channel until you get one that's not getting interfered with.
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  3. #3
    Scarab Lord Djinni's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by glo View Post
    Latency numbers that high don't suggest bandwidth congestion, they suggest packet loss (which is probably getting caused by interference).

    Try lining straight into your router via ethernet if you're currently wireless to test the theory. Also, try testing if it's only when his wireless PS3 controller is on. If any of those two things lead to the issue, log into your router's homepage and manually select a wireless channel until you get one that's not getting interfered with.
    Interesting thought... but this only happens when he's using the PS3 online, when he's playing it locally there's no problem.

    Unfortunately I don't have a long enough ethernet cable to plug either in to the router. But like I said, there isn't a problem if he's playing offline. I would conclude packet loss for WoW too given the extremely jumpy experience. But Vent just lags and then everything comes through at once every few seconds... (think Vent still runs UDP right? so lost packets wouldn't be resent? meaning I'd just miss out that portion of the conversation rather than what its doing now)

    P.S. He only plays on it with the wireless controller, it's only plugged in to charge since it's such a short cable. (It's only just long enough to rest the controller ontop of the machine without stretching it)

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Djinni View Post
    Interesting thought... but this only happens when he's using the PS3 online, when he's playing it locally there's no problem.

    Unfortunately I don't have a long enough ethernet cable to plug either in to the router. But like I said, there isn't a problem if he's playing offline. I would conclude packet loss for WoW too given the extremely jumpy experience. But Vent just lags and then everything comes through at once every few seconds... (think Vent still runs UDP right? so lost packets wouldn't be resent? meaning I'd just miss out that portion of the conversation rather than what its doing now)

    P.S. He only plays on it with the wireless controller, it's only plugged in to charge since it's such a short cable. (It's only just long enough to rest the controller ontop of the machine without stretching it)
    It doesn't have to do with the type of connection, it has to due with the wireless mode the PS3 and your subsequent wireless NIC cards are connecting. Assuming you don't have a dual band router, you have the devices in your house running wirelessly over 2.4Ghz. This mode is heavily trafficked and especially if you're running multiple wireless devices configured the same way, your router may not be capable of handling the increased bandwidth from the PS3.

    If you have a dual band router capable of running 2 SSIDs in different modes, try running a 5Ghz wireless connection and connect your PS3 through there to see if it makes a difference.

  5. #5
    Scarab Lord Djinni's Avatar
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    not meaning to be offensive or derogatory....

    But doesn't me not having QoS support, and stating I have a basic Sky Home Broadband router kind of preclude it being dual-band? Not to mention doesn't your "fix" do exactly the same thing as was suggested before... since your just attempting to fix issues with interference on the same channel. Which would be practically eliminated by using an ethernet cable?

    Although If I understand you right... its just that the PS3 is generating so much traffic on the wireless channel it's preventing other devices from using it properly?

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Djinni View Post
    not meaning to be offensive or derogatory....

    But doesn't me not having QoS support, and stating I have a basic Sky Home Broadband router kind of preclude it being dual-band? Not to mention doesn't your "fix" do exactly the same thing as was suggested before... since your just attempting to fix issues with interference on the same channel. Which would be practically eliminated by using an ethernet cable?

    Although If I understand you right... its just that the PS3 is generating so much traffic on the wireless channel it's preventing other devices from using it properly?
    First off, you stated you don't have a long enough ethernet cord, so I'm assuming by you stating this, that the ethernet cable is NOT an option, correct? So I think you'll need to remove that from the equation as even a possible fix if you can't event connect to it. So that option to remediate the problem is moot and we can't use it, hence the suggestion to swap bands for the PS3.

    Second. You state the issue doesn't occur when he's playing offline. Of course it doesn't, the whole issue is related to interference with the transferring of packets during online play. So this statement isn't necessary, being that there is not a whole lot of bandwidth being utilized by the PS3 at this time. Being that you mention it's not happening when he's playing offline, then the statement about the controllers being wireless is also moot, because it's clear the bandwidth needed for the controllers is not enough to interfere with Wow and the packets moving over the air.

    Your last point "Although If I understand you right... its just that the PS3 is generating so much traffic on the wireless channel it's preventing other devices from using it properly?" is exactly what I'm getting at. My suggestion as stated before is to attempt the connection with the PS3 through a second SSID dedicated for the 5Ghz band...or, if your PC is nearest to your router, it would be more beneficial to use a dual band NIC card and connect the PC to the 5Ghz channel due to the loss in signal power generated by this band.

  7. #7
    Scarab Lord Djinni's Avatar
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    Right, thats what I thought.

    In any case as I said :P the router isn't dual band 8-)

    Since QoS and Different channel/bands is out the question... I guess the only option is to see if the PS3 has an option to throttle/limit the amount of bandwidth it uses... (if you can throttle this on the machine it'll generate less packets right?)

  8. #8
    Bloodsail Admiral dicertification's Avatar
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    Did I miss something? Why can't you just change your 2.4Ghz channel? Chances are you are on channel 6 like the rest of your neighbourhood, then if the PS3 or PC is on the edge of the routers range your devices will have to constantly handshake to re-establish a connection causing the long lag spikes. I use to have similar problems, but moving the router to a better location and changing the channels fixed my issue. It really had nothing to do with bandwidth. Unless you have a really crappy internet connection.

  9. #9
    You can follow dicert's idea as well. You can download the InSSIDer tool and check out what's crowding your channels and find one that's less crowded. Typically 1, 6, 11 are the most reliable: http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/

  10. #10
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    is he downloading games whilst he is playing ? dont have a PS3 so dont know if this is possible or would cause problems

  11. #11
    Scarab Lord Djinni's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Siggma View Post
    is he downloading games whilst he is playing ? dont have a PS3 so dont know if this is possible or would cause problems
    Just playing call of duty

    ---------- Post added 2012-04-06 at 06:33 PM ----------



    Tried a few channels: 1, 2, 6, 12, 13 but none of them are any better than the other.

    ---------- Post added 2012-04-06 at 09:13 PM ----------

    If I turn on the WIRELESS STATION ACCESS, and block the PS3 there's no issue... but they're playing CoD now... and I disabled it for 2 seconds I got instantly disconnected from WoW and Vent...
    Last edited by Djinni; 2012-04-06 at 05:34 PM.

  12. #12
    When i play Playstation 3 online i lagg enourmesly! When someone in my family even turns on a computer or a web site, i get DC, and that's really annyoing! The only way i don't lagg is when no one else is using internett, but if i play offline it's no trouble... Any help?

  13. #13
    The Patient Sorphius's Avatar
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    Holy cow, nice necro!

    Anyway, I had a similar issue to yours with my ps3 a little while back when I first started connecting it wirelessly (instead of plugging right into the modem).

    I solved it by setting up a DMZ for the ps3 and running it that way. No more issues... computer does its thing, ps3 does its, without any trouble.

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