Computer games that use the Internet

[Donald]

I need to know some of the more popular computer games that may use a lot of Internet bandwidth.

I want to block these kinds of games from the guest network at church. We want people to only use the guest network for reasonable things you might do at church. Playing computer games is not one of them.

I am not a person who plays a lot of computer games. I did Pong in the 1970s.while drinking beer. Not much since college

 

[ripcord]

Games are not typically the cause of high network bandwidth, it's streaming video by far.

What are you planning to use to block content? Router settings? Just curious.

Here is an article with a list of higher network consuming games.
https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/games-benefit-a-better-internet

 

[Bailes1992]

Does it cause disruptions to other people trying to use the internet in any way? If not, then I don't see why it would be an issue.

 

[skyactiv]

Change the password and make the internet used only for the business of the church and not its members.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

Games are not typically the cause of high network bandwidth, it's streaming video by far.

Exactly. Online gaming has always been tweaked and tuned to be as as lean an efficient as possible.

But streaming video is a whole other issue and will demand as much available bandwidth as possible.

 

[lakestone]

@Donald you're wasting your time trying to block individual games. Turn off the Internet during The Cermon, restrict the bandwidh to a couple of Megabits per Second (not Megabytes or Mebibytes), and share the WiFi password only with Church members.

This will keep everyone in line, and prevent the "unwanted" hanging around, or hanging around for too long. Two Megabits per Second is more than enough for checking emails, DMs, and browse mostly news sites. Whoever wants to put up with that kind of bandwidth to try and game, well, they deserve what they get.

 

[dubber09]

If you have guest specific Wi-Fi, look into throttling speed, reduce to the point it's unbearable to stream videos while still usable for email and such.

 

[cptbarkey]

Yup, its the kiddos with YT, TikTok, etc.

You might also run into the occasional kid like my son, who remotes into his home desktop and streams games from there. He has a bright future...

 

[Donald]

Does it cause disruptions to other people trying to use the internet in any way? If not, then I don't see why it would be an issue.

It's taking bandwidth away from our uploading of data to be streamed. And causing problems in the uploading of that data.

 

[Hall]

It's taking bandwidth away from our uploading of data to be streamed. And causing problems in the uploading of that data.

I'd say your actual issue is "slow" upload speed, not anyone else's usage. Someone playing games or watching TikTok doesn't take away from your upload speed.

I agree with a couple of the other suggestions to either disable the public WiFi at certain times or throttle it down to something like 128k. It won't help this upload problem, but it will get people off the WiFi and using their own data service.

 

[Donald]

Games are not typically the cause of high network bandwidth, it's streaming video by far.

What are you planning to use to block content? Router settings? Just curious.

Here is an article with a list of higher network consuming games.
https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/games-benefit-a-better-internet

Unifi has a long list of apps I can block. I selected all the ones on the link above.

 

[Donald]

I'd say your actual issue is "slow" upload speed, not anyone else's usage. Someone playing games or watching TikTok doesn't take away from your upload speed.

I agree with a couple of the other suggestions to either disable the public WiFi at certain times or throttle it down to something like 128k. It won't help this upload problem, but it will get people off the WiFi and using their own data service.

We have all the upload Comcast can supply at this location. It's 35 Mbs.

I wish I could get FIOS

 

[ripcord]

Unifi has a long list of apps I can block. I selected all the ones on the link above.

There are a couple of other things you can do to help your situation. One big thing would be to cap the bandwidth speed on the guest network. The other is to adjust the QoS settings to give priority to specific computers or de-prioritize different types of traffic that you don't care about. Unifi will have settings for both of these.

 

[y_p_w]

Games are not typically the cause of high network bandwidth, it's streaming video by far.

What are you planning to use to block content? Router settings? Just curious.

Here is an article with a list of higher network consuming games.
https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/games-benefit-a-better-internet

Downloading updates can be a short-term bandwidth sucker. I've done that before on public/guest Wi-Fi.

I've noticed that some guest Wi-Fi systems block certain commenting systems. Not sure why. You can see the rest of the webpage (like a news article) load, but the comments section will be perpetually "loading" when it can't contact the server.

 

[LDM]

You could use QoS to limit down/upload speed on devices. That would be a lot easier than trying to block individual programs like games.

 

[tmorris1]

We have all the upload Comcast can supply at this location. It's 35 Mbs.

I wish I could get FIOS

Setup Smart Queues based on your bandwidth. You are maxing out your connection and getting buffer bloat.

 

[Rand]

I thought this was another thread about you and the HOA's now computer controlled "gates"

How much is internet a month<$100.. get a second line for guest and offload all that stuff from the main connection?
or use QoS.
or just set time of use and set the guest network to be unavailable or very slow during times you need the full connection.

Any 5 year old will figure out how to use a VPN and bypass any of your content based blocking.

 

[Donald]

I thought this was another thread about you and the HOA's now computer controlled "gates"
View attachment 266575

How much is internet a month<$100.. get a second line for guest and offload all that stuff from the main connection?
or use QoS.
or just set time of use and set the guest network to be unavailable or very slow during times you need the full connection.

Any 5 year old will figure out how to use a VPN and bypass any of your content based blocking.

Managing a second network will be a PIA.

 

[Skippy722]

I’d just set up QoS and be done. Prioritize the machine doing the upload, anything else important below it, and then choke off all the rest.

At least that’s what I do to my kids because slow internet is worse than no internet!

Or set up a secondary “guest” network. Keep all the actual church stuff on Network1 (and this shouldn’t need a ton of monitoring), everyone else gets the leftovers on Network2. That’s how my house is set up, guests get the 2.4ghz network, we get the 5ghz.

 

[andrew_j]

We have all the upload Comcast can supply at this location. It's 35 Mbs.

I wish I could get FIOS

Our local Comcast in last year went to 100 Mbps upload with new router/system upgrade. For years I was stuck with 10 Mbps pretty much since 2001 with them.

Throttle everyone as guest on upload to 1 Mbps they’ll be fine.