RouterOS versions and stability

RouterOS General
1

I have a 750G r3 router that I hadn’t used for a while because I was using Comcast’s all-in-one modem/router. Recently, I switched the Comcast modem to bridge mode and made the 750G r3 my main router. I noticed that Router OS 7 had been available for some time, so I upgraded to the latest version.

However, I found that when I play games, like League of Legends, the ping isn’t stable. It usually sits at around 57ms, but sometimes spikes to 90 or more, causing noticeable lag and frame drops. Interestingly, the ping to the router remains stable.

These ping spikes seem to occur when someone else is streaming videos. It’s not extreme streaming, but it still affects my game. A few days ago, I downgraded to Router OS 6.49.10, but the issue persisted. Yesterday, I downgraded further to 6.45.8. So far, this version has been working well. Even when I played games while other devices were running a full speed test, the ping increased slightly, but I didn’t experience any lag or frame drops.

For all Router OS versions, I used the default configurations and performed a reset after each upgrade or downgrade. I didn’t use any sophisticated firewall or queues; everything was default with FastTrack on.

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and experiences with some of the latest versions of the OS.

2

RouterOS version should not have such a drastic impact on ping (moreover, “should not be able to have”). Try and ping the LOL servers from the router itself, most likely the ISP connection is at fault.

3

“These ping spikes seem to occur when someone else is streaming videos”

This could point to overloading of the connection combined with bad queuing policy probably at the ISP side (“buffer bloat”).
When there is a lot of data to send, the bulk data gets ahead of your ping.

You can check on the “interfaces” screen what the datarate is on the internet connection and see if you observe this problem when it is high.
Also, you should check if the observed datarate is near to the rate you have subscribed (both up and down).
When it is, you might be able to improve the situation using priority queuing in your own router. When the problem is on the downstream side, that basically has to be done by the ISP, but in RouterOS v7 there are some more advanced queuing algorithms that attempt to solve this from the client router side.