new router video

My Belkin wireless ADSL router packed up and I bought a new one, the
same model. It connects fine, and reports a slightly higher down speed
(eg 1216) than the old one; but I notice that streaming video (eg
Youtube) and downloadable video (from education sites) (that's not a
euphemism) is much slower - stop/start, buffering all over the place,
etc.

This is on the main, first computer, to which it is connected by cable.

Is there some setting I've missed? Grateful for any suggestions.

Please assume reasonable intelligence but absolutely no technical
ability if kind enough to reply.
--
Trevor Wright

In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, Trevor Wright
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>My Belkin wireless ADSL router packed up and I bought a new one, the
>same model. It connects fine, and reports a slightly higher down speed
>(eg 1216) than the old one; but I notice that streaming video (eg
>Youtube) and downloadable video (from education sites) (that's not a
>euphemism) is much slower - stop/start, buffering all over the place, etc.
Not going to help you much but a colleague has bought a Belkin wireless
router recently and is having problems with latency sensitive stuff, can
I ask what model you have because it may be a problem with that
particular device.
>
>This is on the main, first computer, to which it is connected by cable.
>
>Is there some setting I've missed? Grateful for any suggestions.
>
>Please assume reasonable intelligence but absolutely no technical
>ability if kind enough to reply.

--
Clint Sharp

In message <NT77g1EutmVHFwP$@clintsmc.demon.co.uk>, Clint Sharp
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, Trevor Wright
><(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>>My Belkin wireless ADSL router packed up and I bought a new one, the
>>same model. It connects fine, and reports a slightly higher down
>>speed (eg 1216) than the old one; but I notice that streaming video
>>(eg Youtube) and downloadable video (from education sites) (that's not
>>a euphemism) is much slower - stop/start, buffering all over the place, etc.
>Not going to help you much but a colleague has bought a Belkin wireless
>router recently and is having problems with latency sensitive stuff,
>can I ask what model you have because it may be a problem with that
>particular device.
It's an F5D 76324. So was the old one, though it looked slightly
different.
--
Trevor Wright

Soni tempori elseu romani yeof helsforo nisson ol sefini ill des Wed, 5 Dec
2007 15:56:10 +0000, sefini jorgo geanyet des mani yeof do
uk.comp.home-networking, yawatina tan reek esk Trevor Wright
<(E-Mail Removed)> fornis do marikano es bono tan el:

>It's an F5D 76324. So was the old one, though it looked slightly
>different.

I've just sent mine back. The port forwarding doesn't work, and it's a known,
unfixed (and unfixable) issue.

Not the problem you're having but if there's one thing wrong with it, there's
probably more.

deKay
--
Lofi Gaming: www.lofi-gaming.org.uk [Gamertag: deKay 01]
Gaming Diary: www.lofi-gaming.org.uk/diary/
My computer runs at 3.5MHz and I'm proud of that
"Zomoniac is wrong"

In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, deKay
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>
>I've just sent mine back. The port forwarding doesn't work, and it's a known,
>unfixed (and unfixable) issue.
>
>Not the problem you're having but if there's one thing wrong with it, there's
>probably more.

Well, I don't know what latency is, or port forwarding...

Can a router affect video streaming and download like this? When
apparently OK otherwise? Or have I got some other problem?
--
Trevor Wright

Soni tempori elseu romani yeof helsforo nisson ol sefini ill des Wed, 5 Dec
2007 19:41:12 +0000, sefini jorgo geanyet des mani yeof do
uk.comp.home-networking, yawatina tan reek esk Trevor Wright
<(E-Mail Removed)> fornis do marikano es bono tan el:

>Well, I don't know what latency is, or port forwarding...
>
>Can a router affect video streaming and download like this? When
>apparently OK otherwise? Or have I got some other problem?

It can, although I don't have any latency issues with mine.

deKay
--
Lofi Gaming: www.lofi-gaming.org.uk [Gamertag: deKay 01]
Gaming Diary: www.lofi-gaming.org.uk/diary/
My computer runs at 3.5MHz and I'm proud of that
"Zomoniac is wrong"

In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, deKay
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>
>>Can a router affect video streaming and download like this? When
>>apparently OK otherwise? Or have I got some other problem?
>
>It can, although I don't have any latency issues with mine.
>
>deKay
Thankyou. What are "latency issues"?
--
Trevor Wright

Soni tempori elseu romani yeof helsforo nisson ol sefini ill des Wed, 5 Dec
2007 22:29:46 +0000, sefini jorgo geanyet des mani yeof do
uk.comp.home-networking, yawatina tan reek esk Trevor Wright
<(E-Mail Removed)> fornis do marikano es bono tan el:

>>>Can a router affect video streaming and download like this? When
>>>apparently OK otherwise? Or have I got some other problem?
>>
>>It can, although I don't have any latency issues with mine.
>>

>Thankyou. What are "latency issues"?

I think (although I'm no expert on this) it's basically a delay between a
request and a response. For general web surfing and stuff a bit of latency
isn't really an issue, but for things like online gaming it's critical that
latency is low.

deKay
--
Lofi Gaming: www.lofi-gaming.org.uk [Gamertag: deKay 01]
Gaming Diary: www.lofi-gaming.org.uk/diary/
My computer runs at 3.5MHz and I'm proud of that
"Zomoniac is wrong"

In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, Trevor Wright
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, deKay
><(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>Well, I don't know what latency is, or port forwarding...
Latency is the time it takes your router to send received data to your
PC, every device in the path between your computer and the site sending
data has some latency and they all add up.

On a router using NAT (yours almost definitely is) there's no way for
someone to access your PC from the Internet. That's generally a good
thing but in some circumstances it's useful if you can let Internet
users or services access your PC (gaming, file sharing, remote access
for you or friends etc.) so you can configure the router to send
incoming requests for, for instance, a web server to a specific PC on
your network, that's called port forwarding.
>
>Can a router affect video streaming and download like this? When
>apparently OK otherwise? Or have I got some other problem?
Definitely, things like browsing the web or downloading email aren't
latency sensitive, if it takes an extra second to arrive, it makes no
difference but if the next chunk of data for your streaming video or
Internet phone call takes an extra second then it all falls apart.

Had a nice chat with a guy at a cable company recently whilst I was
fixing his laptop, he reckons that an awful lot of the speed problems
their customers report are caused by crappy routers that aren't fast
enough to cope with 20Mb/s connections, attaching his company laptop
directly shows a massive increase in speed, dog alone knows what's going
to happen when they upgrade to 50Mb/s, funnily enough he mentioned
Belkin as well...
--
Clint Sharp

"deKay" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Soni tempori elseu romani yeof helsforo nisson ol sefini ill des Wed, 5
> Dec
> 2007 22:29:46 +0000, sefini jorgo geanyet des mani yeof do
> uk.comp.home-networking, yawatina tan reek esk Trevor Wright
> <(E-Mail Removed)> fornis do marikano es bono tan el:
>
>>>>Can a router affect video streaming and download like this? When
>>>>apparently OK otherwise? Or have I got some other problem?
>>>
>>>It can, although I don't have any latency issues with mine.
>>>
>
>>Thankyou. What are "latency issues"?
>
> I think (although I'm no expert on this) it's basically a delay between a
> request and a response.

That's a good example, but the concept is more general: it's the delay
between initiating something and observing the effect. In the context of
networking, the term is typically used to mean round-trip time (RTT) or
"ping" time (the "ping" utility measures RTT, and I assume the name comes
from sonar ranging).

> For general web surfing and stuff a bit of latency isn't really an issue,
> but for things like online gaming it's critical that latency is low.

It's true that low latency is critical for gaming, but it's no bad thing for
web surfing either. As transfer rates go up, delays due to latency becomes a
greater proportion of the elapsed time between requesting and completing the
download of a page; in many cases it is the largest component today.

The situation where latency really doesn't matter is downloading large
files, where the time taken for the initial request is negligible compared
to the time to transfer the data. (There are limits though; google
"bandwidth delay product".)

Anyway, getting back to the topic...

Perhaps surprisingly, latency itself doesn't actually matter much for video.
The real problem is *variation* in latency, but the effects of that can be
avoided by sufficient buffering.

One common cause of variation in latency is congestion of a network link -
especially the upstream path in an ADSL or cable connection. Like rush-hour
congestion on the roads, it takes longer for packets to get from A to B if
they have to queue up; the difference is that the queues of packets can come
and go in a fraction of a second. This makes streaming video more
problematic if you are uploading, or to a lesser extent, downloading, at the
same time. Different routers can behave differently in this regard as some
can prioritise traffic.

Another cause of variation in latency is packet loss, which causes data
transfer to stall momentarily while the loss is identified and recovered
from.

Alex