Prioritize connections

So I don't know whether this is something that needs to be done through Windows, the networking driver(s), or through the router. Basically I want to know what the steps are [or a link to a guide] to prioritize connections. Let's say we're working with a 20 down/2 up connection. I game a lot and don't want my ping to be affected/lagging online gameplay while also having a member of the home stream netflix. I've heard of QoS but I don't know if this applies directly here. I want to do both simultaneously while utilizing the best of the connection for both. Obviously for gaming the upload is the most important, so I figure reducing the bandwidth to 5 down and possibly as much as 1 Mbps UP for the gaming (applied to an .exe such as hl2.exe, let's say) would be ideal, and the rest dedicated to streaming netflix.

If there are any guides on this forum too that would be much appreciated.

 

If you have a router with QoS (E.G. the Linksys E3000) you can specify which protocols (TCP, UDP) and ports are prioritized over others. To do this you need to know which ports everything you're running is running over. It's a fair amount of work and the specifics of how to set it up differ by router model. It needs to be set up on the router because it affects internet traffic network-wide.

A lot of consumer routers do not support this feature it's normally only available on small business or high end home routers.

 

Thanks for the input. Right now I only use a Surfboard modem from Motorola but I have both a NETGEAR WNDR3700 and a ASUS RT-N16 on standby.

So I'm guessing there's no 3rd party program or perhaps even Tomato for the routers to enable this functionality? I'm assuming it needs to be enabled from the factory.

 

The Netgear router may have QoS built in, but when I set it up on my home router, it didn't really affect the ping spikes that happen when someone starts streaming videos that much. The router should be able to limit how much up each device can use, but there wasn't way to limit down as far as I could find.

Adjusting bandwidth of each program requires finding software to do that and then applying it to every device in your family as well.
My wireless card on my laptop has software that does this but its limited to Killer Networks cards, so I can only throttle my own laptop :|

 

Adjusting bandwidth can be done via 3rd part firmware Gargoyle (Netgear is supported) however this will require limit the bandwidth for the computer either permanently or I certain hours but not when a certain game is running.

 

That sounds perfect actually! Assuming it works and isn't glitchy like some other programs I was reading reviews for. Like I said, allocating 50% of the upload to gaming and then leaving about 75% of the download to Netflix seems like it would work out fairly well.

People who use a lot of Netflix, feel free to speak up on thoughts on reasonable bandwidth limits.