Browsing issues when wired

Jimbodandy

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SoSH Member
Jan 31, 2006
11,403
around the way
Newly on Fios 1GB package. Everyone is happy with performance wirelessly. Speed varies a lot, but it's always plenty good enough that there have been no slowdowns.

20yo son was using an adapter to get wireless to his personal machine (home built mostly for gaming). He wired a cat6 cable into the router to get minimum ping and maximum down/up for games, and it works fantastically. But now his browsing is practically unusable. He tries to watch Netflix, even Google, and it barely functions. Games are still super fast. But that's not sustainable. At the end of the day I can recommend that he switches back to the wireless adapter to get everything, but then the gaming experience is no good.

My main machine is getting a typical 192.168 address, as is his. We have the same IPv4 public address.

Any advice would be appreciated. Not at all sure why he can't browse, but the gaming is great. Thanks.
 

cgori

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SoSH Member
Oct 2, 2004
3,999
SF, CA
What router?

My first guess is IP address collision, somehow.
When you say you have the same IPv4 public address what do you mean?

Second guess is bad cat6 cable, it's worth trying another one to rule it out.

At first I thought this was some TCP vs UDP thing, but browsing on anything modern is using QUIC, I believe, which is UDP under the hood, same as most gaming apps.
 

AlNipper49

Huge Member
Dope
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Apr 3, 2001
44,852
Mtigawi
My guess is that there is a gaming performance setting or something on his motherboard management software (or even video card) that he messed with.
 

ColdSoxPack

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Silver Supporter
Jul 14, 2005
2,351
Simi Valley, CA
Make sure your son turns off the wireless setting and is using only the ethernet wired internet. His computer should only want one source. Otherwise I agree with cgori.
 

Jimbodandy

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Jan 31, 2006
11,403
around the way
What router?

My first guess is IP address collision, somehow.
When you say you have the same IPv4 public address what do you mean?

Second guess is bad cat6 cable, it's worth trying another one to rule it out.

At first I thought this was some TCP vs UDP thing, but browsing on anything modern is using QUIC, I believe, which is UDP under the hood, same as most gaming apps.
Thanks to everyone for the feedback.

My post was somewhat incomplete. What I meant about IPv4 was that our public IPs visible through "what is my IP" were identical (yes, that is my limited level of network knowledge), so I thought that we could rule out that the ISP was annoyed with my house requesting two IPs somehow.

Our local IPs were 192.168 ones but different.

Lots of good stuff to chew on here. Will post the router model when I get home.
 

Jimbodandy

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Jan 31, 2006
11,403
around the way
Let this go for a long time, but still a problem. Boy is unplugging the LAN cable and going wireless to watch videos as a workaround.

The router model is CR1000A, which seems to be pretty standard. He is plugged into the LAN 2 slot, not the 10GE one.

More clarity on behavior--
--Games work great
--All streaming works great
--Previously-recorded video does not work

If he wants to watch a YouTube video, he can't. But if a friend brings up the same YT video and streams it, it works fine over stream. So...Seems like video over TCP is no good. Any advice on how to fix that would be appreciated. There's definitely no IP collision. Most things work fine. He never needs to reboot, nor do any of us. It's just YT, Netflix, etc. that are useless.
 

lowtide

New Member
Jul 20, 2005
15
All devices on your side of the router show up as the same address on the other side of router (that is what routers do).

The only thing I can think is the DNS entry on the wired connection is different and can't resolve new addresses. Trying setting it to the same DNS as the wireless adapter.
 

The_Powa_of_Seiji_Ozawa

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Sep 9, 2006
7,874
SS Botany Bay
All devices on your side of the router show up as the same address on the other side of router (that is what routers do).

The only thing I can think is the DNS entry on the wired connection is different and can't resolve new addresses. Trying setting it to the same DNS as the wireless adapter.
The DNS issue would be my guess too.
 

cgori

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Oct 2, 2004
3,999
SF, CA
That’d be my guess or a bad cable. I don’t do hardcore gaming but the only thing I bother to connect to a wire is my Cisco desk phone for work. I really don’t see much point in wired at all unless you are doing low latency required gaming.
If you have wires available/easily usable, I find that taking everything off the wireless that you can will improve the stability and performance of the wifi for the remaining devices. At my house there are very very few things on wifi and it works great, all the time. I have other friends with very fancy wifi setups but tons of devices on their wireless network at their houses and they do seem less reliable to me. Just an observation.

For the OP, DNS or bad cable would make sense to me as well.
 

NortheasternPJ

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Nov 16, 2004
19,271
If you have wires available/easily usable, I find that taking everything off the wireless that you can will improve the stability and performance of the wifi for the remaining devices. At my house there are very very few things on wifi and it works great, all the time. I have other friends with very fancy wifi setups but tons of devices on their wireless network at their houses and they do seem less reliable to me. Just an observation.

For the OP, DNS or bad cable would make sense to me as well.
Ive had Eeros for the last few years and as long as the coverage no issues. At this point wireless bandwidth / usage shouldn’t be an issue. We have a bunch on wireless and it’s great all the time.

The reality is most cable Wi-Fi / Modems combos all in one are garbage and most wireless routers are garbage. That’s the main reason for most that wireless is slow.