Can Telstra Help You with Laggy Gaming and Stuttering Streams?

This article is sponsored by Telstra.

If your home internet plan seems fast but still disappoints, you already know it's hard to find a reliable solution for laggy gaming and stuttering video streams (and the complaints that follow these match-ruining interruptions!)

Choosing a plan for a household that regularly games and streams videos takes a bit more thought. Here's what to actually pay attention to, starting with your nbn® connection itself.

Here's how to see if you're eligible for a free nbn® fibre upgrade

In an effort to decommission the old copper network, nbn® has been working with ISPs to upgrade these connections to premium Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) technology — for free for standard installations. If you live at a selected address, all you need to do is place an order for an eligible nbn® service and you could take up this fibre upgrade, and Telstra and nbn® co will take care of the rest. There's no mucking around on your end, and nbn® can replace the old copper wires with new fibre cabling to your home.

Additional charges may apply if you require equipment to be installed in a specific location.

What to do:

1. Confirm your eligibility by visiting the Telstra website
2. Choose an eligible high-speed plan
3. Your ISP will arrange for an approved nbn® installer to connect your home with new fibre cabling
4. The nbn® installer will carry out the work, and your nbn® service will be switched over to your new FTTP connection.

It usually takes 2 to 4 weeks from the time you place your order to your nbn® installer appointment. Your existing nbn® service will continue to work right up until the new service is ready to go, however there may be a small (15-30 minutes) interruption based on what is required at your premises.

The invisible Wi-Fi bottleneck

Upgrading your nbn® connection can make a massive difference, but you might not experience the performance if your Wi-Fi router is too old to share the speed with the devices in your home. To help remedy this, Telstra includes the Telstra Smart Modem 4 (TSM4) for use on select nbn® plans, which supports Wi-Fi 7: the current generation of home wireless technology.

(If you cancel, change tech type or to an Internet Only plan, within 24 months, simply return your modem or pay a $200 non-return fee.)

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One of the core features of Wi-Fi 7 is the ability to use multiple frequency bands simultaneously (via Multi-Link Operation, or MLO). While older Wi-Fi technology can process multiple data requests on a single frequency band, MLO gives Wi-Fi 7 an edge by using multiple bands at the same time or by dynamically routing devices to less congested bands. This way, devices can get the data they need faster than before.

In a busy household, the practical benefit of Wi-Fi 7 should be invisible: everyone using the internet with minimal interruptions (and complaints). Wi-Fi 7 handles multiple connected devices more efficiently than Telstra's previous modems, helping to ensure smooth online performance.

What to do: Wi-Fi technology isn't something you can patch with a software update, so it might be time to get a new router. If your household's internet use has significantly increased since you bought your current Wi-Fi router, it's a great time to upgrade. The Telstra Smart Modem 4, with its Wi-Fi 7 tech, helps beat buffering and lag and is built to deliver strong performance into the future.

For gaming, ping is king

Raw download speed gets most of the attention, but latency (also known as ping) is what separates a good experience from a frustrating one. Ping is the time it takes for a signal to travel from your device to a game server and back. Even a fast connection can produce laggy, unresponsive gameplay if your nbn® connection latency is too high.

What determines ping? The distance from your home to the game server is a big part of it, which means that the quality of the network carrying your traffic is an essential part of the equation.

What to do: To determine the latency on your home nbn® connection, run a speed test and look for the result measured in milliseconds; the lower the number, the better. Running this speed test will give you all of the information you need.

Repeat these speed tests at times when your household uses the internet most to find any big fluctuations. Latency of around 10ms or less indicates a great nbn® connection.

Internet Optimiser: useful for mixed households

Internet Optimiser is available on selected plans which include the Telstra Smart Modem 4 for use and is designed to help with network optimisation without requiring a degree in network engineering. During setup, this software will stress-test your network to calibrate the settings on your Telstra Smart Modem 4, then automatically adjust them to reduce latency and congestion where possible.

From the dashboard, you can prioritise specific devices and traffic types on your home network. For example, you might flag your work laptop as a top priority to help avoid buffering during business video calls.

Gamers might like to prioritise a game console on the network so that if someone else starts downloading a large file, the network knows that a gaming session needs access to its data first. You can even use Internet Optimiser to favour local, lower-latency game servers and filter out distant servers that add unnecessary lag. This can make a huge difference to online gaming performance.

You can also create performance profiles to switch priority devices as needed. You might have a 'work from home' profile for your 9-to-5, and then an 'entertainment' profile to switch the priority devices from work laptops to gaming consoles and video streaming devices.

For households with heavy, varied internet use, Internet Optimiser can make a noticeable difference to performance and doesn't require any networking knowledge. Available for Telstra nbn® customers on an eligible plan with a compatible Telstra Smart Modem, excluding 5G, Satellite, ADSL, Fixed Wireless, Ultrafast, and Internet Only nbn® plans.

Bonus points for advanced setups

Avoid CGNAT: hearing the acronym NAT (Network Address Translation) is enough to raise the hairs on a gamer's neck. Without going into the nitty-gritty, your ISP assigns you a public IP address, and your router uses NAT to identify each individual device on your network without each needing its own public IP address. It is worth noting that Telstra doesn't use CGNAT on any of its home internet services, so its customers can avoid these complications.

Gaming consoles like Xbox and PlayStation optimise online gaming by splitting connections into three NAT buckets: Open, Moderate and Strict. A Strict NAT limits gamers to a much smaller pool of other players to connect with, leading to longer wait times for available spots on the server.

But even with the optimal router setup, gamers can still end up with a Strict NAT if their ISP uses a system called Carrier-Grade NAT (CGNAT), which lumps multiple connections behind a single IP address and uses NAT to identify them individually. This system lets the ISP avoid spending extra money to increase its IP address allocation, but leaves gamers with a NAT-on-NAT situation.

The only solution here is to look more closely at how your ISP handles NAT at the network level and choose a provider that doesn't employ CGNAT.

Gamers may also consider using a Static IP address to overcome persistent NAT issues. For an additional fee, Telstra will assign your connection its own IPv4 address that will not change, even when you cycle your nbn® connection. A Static IP address helps the Telstra Smart Modem 4 create persistent rules to open ports for gaming servers and even lets gamers host their own gaming servers for friends to join.

Don't overlook upload performance: Upload speed matters more than many people realise, though, particularly for video calls, sharing large files, or anyone in the household who streams gameplay live to an audience on Twitch or YouTube.

If that applies to anyone at home, upload speeds deserve attention when comparing plans, not just download. Higher-tier nbn® plans generally offer faster typical busy period upload speeds. 

(Speeds experienced may be lower due to factors including modem and cabling and in-home setup/ wiring.)

No lock-in plans: Telstra's home internet plans are month-to-month, so there's no need to worry about whether your needs change. You can upgrade to a higher-speed plan if household usage grows, or step back down if it doesn't. For households still working out what they need, this helps remove some of the risk from the decision.

nbn® plans from Telstra can offer a solid foundation for households where gaming and video streaming are part of the daily mix of internet activity, and performance is important. If you've been battling for smooth connectivity, the Telstra Smart Modem 4 and Internet Optimiser tool can help give you the upper hand, and is available on eligible Telstra nbn® plans.

Joseph Hanlon

Editorial Director | X | LinkedIn

Joe Hanlon has been immersed in mobile phones, plans and the internet for over a decade, having written for publications like CNET, Techradar, Gizmodo and Lifehacker. He steers the editorial ship and makes sure that we are always serving up the most useful guides and recommendations. If you ever bump into Joe on the street, don't be afraid to ask for a phone recommendation. It's embarrassing how much he enjoys talking about this stuff. He also loves listening to podcasts, so feel free to email Joe with recommendations.

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