I subscribed to Stadia a week ago and so far I've been playing Cyberpunk and Rage 2, I'm on a 18mbs connection (<20ms ping) over ethernet when playing on Google TV and apart from a couple of LATE night sessions that played beautifully on FHD setting most of times it's just plain frustration with both video and audio latency issues just on 720p! I guess people on full fibre might be of a different opinion about cloud gaming, so far the minimum 10mbs connection advised by Google seems just pure delusion! What's your opinion?
Hi @Prozac1972
The performance of Stadia really depends on your ISP and your home network.
I noticed you say that the late night sessions seem to work just fine. Is this a because you are the only one using your internet at that time?
Looks like something at your home network is the issue, could be because there are more users.
Of course more than one person is on my home network, would be unrealistic to assume that I'm the only one allowed to use broadband while playing video games.....I'd say it's more a case of Stadia servers being less under load at 1am then they'd be at 8pm on a Saturday. Just left a bad session of Rage 2 now at 720p with audio and video stutter with 15mbs and 20ms of ping, to be honest even with my wife watching netflix in the other room I should be able to play a decent session at 10mbs min according to Google!
Hi @Prozac1972
Sorry I meant that the problem is your home network. So if more users are online during the day your internet connection is not optimal.
The Stadia servers work just fine during the day. There is no dip on the Stadia service connectivity during peak hours. Stadia is a cloud service which scales when needed.
I am afraid your home internet connection is not up to the task when more people are using your internet. You need a quality internet connection, bandwidth only is not enough. ![]()
I have a 35mb down and 9mb up connection and find that the performance of stadia degrades over time based on when my router was last rebooted. It was shocking this morning at 5am when only myself and the dog were up. reboot the router and hey the performance was excellent again... FYI This also manifests itself in poor Teams video calls too but does not affect youtube/netflix/disney etc...
The problem i see is that people assume that because they can stream multiple netflix programmes/films in 4k then stadia will work under the same conditions. This is not always true. The bandwith requirement for a film is a lot less than for a game due to compression and encoding.
That also can be a issue.
Restarting your network hardware to see if that helps.
Another reason why Netflix, Disney and YouTube do work with a less quality network is because these services have the ability to cache.
There is no realtime interaction needed so part os the movie can be cached on the device you are streaming on.
Teams is a realtime stream just like Stadia, no options to cache. ![]()
Would setting up a port forward in my router for Stadia improve the quality of the connection perhaps?
Not sure port forwading would work. If your access point/internet router has some form of Quality of Service (QoS) or traffic prioritisation, you maybe able to modify settings on that to try and bolster the performance. But be careful doing this as you could stop everything from working.
Hi Prozac, I hope I can also provide some helpful information. I have to agree with Dancorp on this, port forwarding may not resolve issues relating to bandwidth or network prioritisation. That is what QoS does. Just as an example, I have 550mbit down and 50mbit up at an avg ping of approx 9ms. If I disable my QoS and someone starts streaming movies or starts downloads, I see lags and frame drops on Stadia as well, as the Stadia connection/stream will not have priority. With QoS not a single frame drop regardless of how many device are online and active in my home network.
In contrast to a video/audio stream from Youtube, Netflix etc Stadia obviously cannot use any buffering technique as this would add several seconds of delay. Therefore any packet delay has direct impact on stream quality and input latency.
Also, don't underestimate the number of devices you have on your home network, usually it is much more than people expect as most will only consider devices they use frequently and heavily i.e. Pc, Laptop, Console but there are definitely more than they think
ie. all smart phones, TV, laptop, smart home stuff, etc Any of those can have app or firmware updates which may cause lag spikes while gaming on any platform.
The best option will be check your router for basic/automated QoS functionality. Best case option is: you can give your Stadia device (CCU, PC, phone) highest priority. That would ensure that traffic from those devices will always handled first.
If you dont have any QoS settings and don't want to buy a new router, you could try following workaround which could solve or at least improve your issues: determine your maximum up and down bandwidth, and limit your router to 80% of that maximum. That will disable any device from maxing out your total bandwidth and may give you some headspace to avoid bottlenecking of your internet connection.
Also, when you said "at night times it was better" the question is also, was it better because everyone else in your house was in bed and therefore you had no other traffic on your home network, or your neighbours (eg. same house, same street/area) were offline too, reducing the load on your ISP. ISPs nowadays tend to overbook their network nodes. That has been an issue in high-dense residential areas for some time and was further impacted due to Covid-19 and many more people working from home.
Sorry for the long post, I hope this is helpful somehow.
Agreed! I looked into the bt hub smart 2 and it had no qos or other game friendly feature, fact is even on ethernet late at night I cannot seem to get a reliable enough line. So I ordered a tuf-ax5400 router in the hope that it will improve things.......we'll see@
Sounds good. Good luck. Fingers crossed your ISP is not overbooked in your area.
If you are connecting via WiFi make sure to connect via 5GHz. I have separated my 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks generelly to have more on control over my Wifi devices. Nonetheless my CCU is connected via ethernet.
Just something to consider, your ping is really good but your data (mbps) is on the low end. The speed at which data can travel (ping) is decent for almost any game. Your mbps (the volume of data that travels to you provided by your isp) is on the low side. This is particularly important with games that have a demand for data, ie shooters for example. Fractions of a second matter in games like Destiny as where it doesn't matter as much in puzzle type games.
You might want to bump up your data.