WMM for Gaming – To Enable or Not?

Hardcode online gamers know unless they have the best Internet for gaming, they will never truly have fun. If the network is stable or the speed isn’t good enough, you will experience lag and won’t be able to enjoy the experience.

This is why most gamers prefer using an Ethernet connection for a faster and more reliable experience when playing on a game console. Does that mean you can’t have fun on Wi-Fi? Of course, you can! You must have heard about WMM for that. Don’t know what that’s all about? Hop on for more deets.

What is WMM?

WMM is short for Wireless Multimedia Extensions. Some also call it Wi-Fi multimedia. It’s designed to provide quality of service features to the IEEE 802.11 networks.

It’s basically a subset of 802.11e WLAN that is meant to improve the QoS on the network. It prioritizes data packets based on four categories. You can change the priority levels, though. These are the four categories:

Voice

When you give voice the highest priority, it ensures the VoIP calls have minimal latency, there’s no voice distortion because of a poor connection and the quality of the call is great overall.

Video

You can place video packets in the second tier and prioritize it over other data traffic. This ensures that you can connect up to 4 standard definition TVs and one HDTV on your WLAN.

Best Effort

These are the data packets that originate from the legacy apps or devices that lack the QoS standards.

Background

This includes file downloads and other activities that continue in the background and don’t suffer from latency.

How Does It Work?

The job of a WMM is to specify the protocol used by the AP for communicating the policy to the client and the client must then send a transmit request. It does not set the priority policy itself. This is the job of the app or the device that sends the data.

A WMM works with any type of home Wi-Fi system. To make it work, you will have to enable it on your router. Follow these steps:

1. Log into Your Account

Go to your router’s settings page and log into your account. This is done by entering the default IP address of the manufacturer located underside of the router. You may also check the manual to find how to log into your router’s setting.

2. Go to the Wireless Tab

Now head towards the wireless tab to edit the settings. You will find the WMM tab there.

3. Enable the WMM Support

All you have to do is toggle the settings. You are likely to find advanced settings under this menu but it’s advised to stay away unless you know what you are doing.

4. Reboot the Router

Once you have applied the settings, reboot the router and you have successfully enabled the WMM settings.

Should You Use WMM for Gaming?

Many gamers search for the Best internet deals to find maximum speed for a seamless gaming experience. The only problem is sometimes, it’s not enough. Gamers wonder if enabling WMM can help. WMM enhances video and audio quality, which is exactly what a gamer needs. So this sounds right, doesn’t it? You will be able to enjoy the two things but there’s a downside to enabling this setting. It affects your download speed. The entire focus goes towards streaming the data and this can mess with the overall experience.

Long story short, it’s not recommended to turn on WMM if you are using your wireless network for gaming, primarily. Sometimes, the WMM is enabled on the routers by default. This could be messing with your gaming experience.

Another thing you could do is configure QoS for upstream and disable the WMM. This could improve your gaming experience to a great extent. Many people fail to understand that gaming is not all about downloading audio and video. There is a lot more to be downloaded when you are playing a game online. Turning off the WMM will actually improve the speed and performance of your network for a better experience.

Is WMM Recommended for All Types of Browsing?

Experts don’t recommend enabling WMM for gaming but it’s you can turn it on for browsing other apps and take advantage of the priority it gives to voice and audio.

To boost your gaming experience, you may, however, enable the QoS to prioritize traffic for important activities. When you enable it, the traffic of the gaming app or any other application you have prioritized is sent first. As a result, the performance is improved and Internet stuttering is no longer your problem. Even popular router providers like NETGEAR recommends the gamers to enable the upstream QoS feature on their router only.