My girlfriend keeps blaming FFXIV on slow internet

We use the same internet, myself an ethernet connection and her over WiFi.

I often play or sit in queue while she's doing something else on her computer, and she complains constantly about internet problems when it's open. I open task manager to look at its network usage, keep it open while I'm playing, and it never goes above 0.3 Mbps.

I tell and show her this, but she doesn't believe me because it's an MMO.

Is FFXIV the cause of our slow internet, or is it just because our internet is spotty garbage?

Wi-fi can be pretty spotty depending on where you live. It can also depend on one's location in your household as well. Does your gf's connection have anything to do with her distance from the source perhaps? Personally, I use 2 different connections. 1 for my PC and the other for my console(s), a wired and wireless connection respectively. They never really conflict in any way, at least for me. I'll be browsing the internet and watching videos on my PC while waiting for queues on my PS5 a fair amount of the time. Works out pretty well, honestly.

Are you for real? :O

Caveate the hubby and I both use some heavy bandwidth on a regular basis.

I have seen situations where a program is just one too many and causes one person in the house to have net slowdowns when the other is not seeing it. In our household We have my gaming PC which is on most all night. ALso my hubbys ancient Mac. We also 100% stream for TV (ie Youtube TV, netflix, Hulu etc no cable tv). Sometimes one or the other of us boots up 1 program too many and things start to chug for the other one. It can happen.

I would suspect the OP's wife's wifi first though. That can be notoriously sensitive.

I notice zero difference on our wifi when two people are running FFXIV. FFXIV isn't the problem. The problem could be your isp, the router, the wifi signal, your wife's network card, the place you're living in blocking signal from one room to another or someone wardriving. Wardriving is when someone outside of your home is using your internet without your permission.

MMOs in general require a consistent, but not heavy internet connection. I have run FFXIV off of a phone hotspot before and used less than 5GB of data for the month I did it.

A quick Google search tells me that FFXIV uses a little less than 20 MB per hour. That would be 44.4 kilobits per second. You could literally run this game off of an old 56K modem. I wouldn't recommend it, but you could.

Me and my sister both play MMOs in the evening at the same and have no issues with slow internet, not to mention my mom is on WiFi in the evening when she is home and has not had any issues with us playing and her speed.

WiFi can be spotty depending on various factors. Strength of the signal to her device. Distance from the router to her. Anything obstructing the signal, metal walls, etc.

You sitting in Que waiting is not the issue.

My partner would always complain about the Wifi in our bedroom. One day I decided to replace the router with Google Wifi mesh, and put one of them in the bedroom which would ultimately boost the signal so her laptop didn't have to connect to the living room router. It's good enough to play even FFXIV in-bed. I think we were getting slight channel interference sometimes from the house next door, since our bedroom is at the corner of the house. Just some things to think about, you can always run one of those wifi signal apps on a notebook and test how things are normally.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

We use the same internet, myself an ethernet connection and her over WiFi.

I often play or sit in queue while she's doing something else on her computer, and she complains constantly about internet problems when it's open. I open task manager to look at its network usage, keep it open while I'm playing, and it never goes above 0.3 Mbps.

I tell and show her this, but she doesn't believe me because it's an MMO.

Is FFXIV the cause of our slow internet, or is it just because our internet is spotty garbage?

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I'm no expert on girlfriends, but it sounds like she is trying to say "stop playing that game and pay attention to me." In my experience, they don't ever just say what they want, but drop hints and see if you get it.

I'm honestly surprised WiFi is still as crap as it is. It hasn't been good since day 1 and doesn't seem to have improved much since the early 2000s. I've ended up using powerline adapters and wire connecting all my devices (excusing mobile and tablet). As long as the wiring in your house is good, you'll get significantly better and more reliable speed/connection. You do need to be near a plug socket, but depending on where your girlfriend likes to sit on her laptop, that might not be an issue. Powerline adapters are pretty cheap too.

I highly doubt it's FFXIV for all the reasons people above have mentioned. Outside of trying the above, you could look at upgrading your WiFi box and checking out how old her laptop is and if the issue is her hardware being dated. That would likely end up being pretty expensive however.

Edit: To clarify I'm talking specifically about the powerline adapters that have ethernet slots to wire connect devices

She's the reason for your slow internet. : D

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Originally Posted by Dancingweapon

I'm honestly surprised WiFi is still as crap as it is. It hasn't been good since day 1 and doesn't seem to have improved much since the early 2000s. I've ended up using powerline adapters and wire connecting all my devices (excusing mobile and tablet). As long as the wiring in your house is good, you'll get significantly better and more reliable speed/connection. You do need to be near a plug socket, but depending on where your girlfriend likes to sit on her laptop, that might not be an issue. Powerline adapters are pretty cheap too.

I highly doubt it's FFXIV for all the reasons people above have mentioned. Outside of trying the above, you could look at upgrading your WiFi box and checking out how old her laptop is and if the issue is her hardware being dated. That would likely end up being pretty expensive however.

Edit: To clarify I'm talking specifically about the powerline adapters that have ethernet slots to wire connect devices

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Powerline adapters are what I call a last ditch option, and really shouldn't be used converting to Wi-Fi ever, they should be from router-to-device only. As they are severely limited in bandwidth because of electrical noise, and distance. If you have old and bad wiring in the house, I like to say good luck, use at your own risk. Manufacturers that like to chest thump they get 100mbps consistently, that's lab testing. Not always actual real world use.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

Is FFXIV the cause of our slow internet, or is it just because our internet is spotty garbage?

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FF14, in fact most MMO's are very light on bandwith and almost definitely not the cause. It's either your internet is bad, and/or she had background updates/downloads going on.

Games transfer an insignificant amount of data compared to streaming.

If you are on Windows, you could try this:

1. Open your Start Menu.
2. Search for "resmon" (without quotes).
3. Press ENTER, this will open the Resource Monitor.
4. One of the tabs will be called Network. Click on it.

This tab lists all of your current connections, as well as how much data they are sending and receiving.

With that window open, try watching a YouTube video on Chrome. You will see that a simple video uses over 10,000 B/s, sometimes going over the 100,000s. This is a very active, "heavy" connection. But even this isn't really enough to cause a "slow internet", unless your internet is REALLY bad.

But that's not even the point.

The point of this experiment is for you to see, in comparison, just how little data FFXIV actually requires. Check the list for ffxiv_dx11.exe, and look how much it's using in total. Mine sits comfortably in the 60-70 range most of the time. This is EXTREMELY low.

This is true for practically all other multiplayer games out there. Explain this to your girlfriend - help her understand that it's not FFXIV that's causing your slow internet. It's definitely something else. And in fact, you know what? Maybe the source of your problem might show up on Resource Monitor.

Best of luck figuring out what's going on and calming your girlfriend. lol

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Originally Posted by Triphex

I'm no expert on girlfriends, but it sounds like she is trying to say "stop playing that game and pay attention to me." In my experience, they don't ever just say what they want, but drop hints and see if you get it.

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Agreed but also date better women if the only ones you've been around are only capable of dropping hints and not being blunt about their needs.

Get rid of her.

If someone wants to be my gf I will listen to you complain about all your problems and be your emotional landfill so long as you don't look like honey boo boos mom IRL.

No your net sucks

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Originally Posted by PredatoryCatgirl

MMOs in general require a consistent, but not heavy internet connection. I have run FFXIV off of a phone hotspot before and used less than 5GB of data for the month I did it.

A quick Google search tells me that FFXIV uses a little less than 20 MB per hour. That would be 44.4 kilobits per second. You could literally run this game off of an old 56K modem. I wouldn't recommend it, but you could.

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I do the hotspot thing myself sometimes because my WiFi is just weird; it severs the connection to anything on its own whenever. Especially given the queues I end up spending from morning to late evening on hotspot until I get the alert that my 1.5 GB a day is halfway done for. It's great.

My internet has gone down on random occasions, and I use my cell phones hotspot feature. I can not get a screen cap at the moment but using it for two days straight it used way less than a gig. I have the 10 gb 'unlimited' internet plan though that just means 10 gb and after that you get super slow speeds. I was honestly surprised how little it used, and was also very pleasantly surprised because if I were ever away from home I could use it for me and my partner as temporary internet if there was a long term issue. Now netflix or youtube, aye that would eat the data super fast.

Though no offense to the op or their partner, but having situations similar occur in my past... It just sounds like an excuse to start a fight. I could be entirely off base with this assumption, but I truly hope this is not the case and they could see reason. There are numerous ways to track data usage over the network to know what device is using how much bandwidth.

You can check it within your router if you know how to access it, unless having the standard modem/router combo net providers sometimes rent out. There are a few articles that could help for how to show them how much it is using. It is tough to assist completely without knowing if the other party will understand or listen if given evidence in the first place.

Heck it could even be someone sneaking into your wifi or a phone going rogue. When I was on wifi my all in one Lenovo decided it would download a ton of windows updates in the back round I had to go into my router and hunt down which mac address was causing the massive data usage all of the sudden. Also believe it or not a downstairs neighbor at some point had their huge microwave placed directly below where I placed my router and it would cut out every time they would microwave anything literally getting kicked from final fantasy mid dungeon.

I wish you both well, and hope you find what is zapping your net.

She isn't troubled by "internet problems when you play". She's troubled by you playing.

This would raise a lot of red flags for me.

Every New day i read a thread like this in the forums and i can Relate more and more to Thanos and why he snapped his Fingers...
Srsly...

If ffxiv is slow for you, ffxiv might be at fault. The reason is probably whatever she is doing though. I.e. streaming netflix or even youtube takes a lot more out of your internet than ffxiv does.

On a 5mbps internet, you wont notice if two other people plays ffxiv, but you will notice one person watching netflix. On a 10mbps+ internet (which is low for todays average) you won't really notice anything even if torrenting.

a remote software dev who's a complete luddite when it comes to how network connections work, uh huh