So I've been using a Linksys broadband router with very good success.
Linksys by Cisco - WRT54G Support

I have three home computers, a Wii, a Tivo, and a printer all networked together behind the router.
It functions flawlessly and on my cable modem the download speeds are pushing 30mb per second, upload speeds push 5mb per second. That's five, not point five just for clarity.
The trouble began when my grandson wanted to use one of my computers as a game server.
It's an old P4 2ghz, more than enough cpu to run a small server, so I set it up and opened up the appropriate ports in the router.
I can play on it just fine behind the router, but he get's terrible lag.
The cure was to remove the router and enable ICS on the server and make it the router.
Also, I noticed that the Tivo responds to the network a lot faster now too.

 

Game servers take a whole lot to run. It's ALWAYS best to run them on a seperate, dedicated box. If you run a game server on the box, with all the mapping and config***** files there, then run the game itself on there, it's usually not a good sign. Home dedicated servers were always a pain in the butt to play on, and is why we made them illegal in CPL and CAL play. CPU power isn't always important with gaming, if you've got a crappy video card, with the best CPU, you'll get lower FPS. I'd drop the game server off of it, pay $30 a month for a dedicated server.

 

That's basically what I do, run the server on a separate, dedicated box.
I used to run a Q3 server years ago and limited it to 4 players because of the limited upload speeds at the time.
Again, it was on a dedicated box that was directly connected to the cable modem.
Try and run it through the router and the game would play fine for a couple of minutes, then I could watch thier ping times steadily climb until they were standing in one spot, frozen in place.
I was fine, could run around, etc, because I was behind the router but everyone else would choke out.
Eliminate the router and everyone would enjoy sub 30-50ms ping.
.
Same scenario this time around again for my grandson's Counterstrike server.
Router has to be eliminated or everyone connecting through the internet gets lagged out.
Make the server computer the "router" and it's fine.

 

I always had issues with routers and servers, never troubleshooted anything, just did what you did and unplugged the thing, but wanted the added security so I gave up on the any sort of server crap from my house hogging my connection speed and bought a dedicated box to run several servers off of.

 

Many of the little home use routers just aren't designed for any sort of serious throughput. They have little memory and weak processors so they can be made cheaply for the people who generally use a few computers to browse the web, do email and stuff.

I've never been into gaming, or any other sort of high throughput use, other than some video streaming here and there, so I can't make any recommendations. I'd say hunt around some of the gamer web forums and see what sort of router hardware they are using. I'd bet there are much better (albeit probably more expensive) routers and router software that you can find that will better suit your needs.

 

The "broadband" routers are nice for their simplicity, but they are also limited by that very same factor.

Cisco has some decent products out there. But, they generally fall into the Enterprise or Small Business categories and their price tags reflect that.


You might look into something like SmoothWall (Express Open Source Firewall Project). It is a freeware firewall project which can can essentially take an old PC (with extra NICs) into a NAT-capable router with a very lengthy set of firewall controls.

 

Wish I had your problems Dan. Here's the best available where I live



That means I could probably play pong online, right?

 

I'm not that committed to the project to where it requires that I buy anything or subscribe to a service.
What I have at home is going to have to do.

Been hunting the forums without much luck. I might be missing something, but what I've been able to learn is you either rent server space somewhere $$$ or do what I'm doing.
But you have to be careful about the bandwidth speed, tick rate, and amount of players or everyone gets lagged out.

Yeah, the high ticket items are off the table for this round.
Smoothwall would work, but I've played with Linux before and found it to be a bigger hassle than working with Microsoft.

That's enough to support one client playing on a server.
This is what I get on two different test servers.
One is faster upload speed and the other is slower upload, but the ping time is much better.

 

If you don't mind me hijacking your thread a little, when you run that test, does the speed run about 40% - 50% of your final number for most of the test, then the last 5% of the test it's like the connection goes WOT and the speed really jumps up?

Mine didn't use to do that but it is now. Most of the test I run between 0.3 and 0.4, then at the end it jumps up to 0.8. Seems like it knows I'm doing a test and opens things up to make it look good. I still can't watch a youtube video without hitting pause and letting it download first. The video plays faster than I can load it.

 

Many providers over the past few years have been throttling bandwidth upstream at specific default port numbers. In addition to popular default game server ports, many will also restrict thoroughput for service requests at bit torrent traffic (ie DVD, ISO file swapping). If gaming with a known group of friends at your home server, changing the game port numbers used in config or in the registry in many instances will work. Changing to a higher thoroughput personal router may make no difference at all depending upon your provider's area config and traffic policies in place upstream.

 

They both start out at the same speed and stay that way through the whole download.

That's a good way to lose a customer!
If I was heavy into gaming and was getting lagged out because they slowed me down on a certain port I would be shopping.