To expect DH not to play computer games whilst I'm working

[bowbowceo]

Just to give you some background.

DH is self employed and aside from his line of work all but shutting down due to COVID, he's also classed as vulnerable due to pre existing health issues so has been advised by consultant not to work. I am fully supportive of this and want him to be healthy, whatever the financial hit will be.

On the other hand I am employed at a senior level and am able to work from home and have been doing so on a full time basis since lockdown came into play.

DH in the morning will make me my morning cuppa, walk the dogs, tidy the house and then mooch around a bit. No problem with this whatsoever and I believe he's making the best of a difficult situation. However he has in the last few days started gaming online with some of his friends which impacts on the WiFi I'm using for work. Often it causes me to be cut off mid way during Skype calls and today it was the final straw when I was cut off from a call with my manager and team 3 times within an hour. I explained to DH that this was happening and asked him to come offline and he protested that it wasn't his gaming impacting on my WiFi (even though his game was working fine!) and kept making excuses not to come off the game. Eventually I put my foot down and demanded he stopped playing because my work is important and I needed to finish the call I was on. He stropped making a comment about having to go and stare at a wall instead!

I get this is a very first world problem but I saw a real childish side to him today and it's making me really question a lot about him and the value he places on my job. He is a very hard worker and I know is finding this adjustment tough.

For context I work at a senior level in the public sector and not something he has an awful lot to do with in the work that he does.

Rant over! Am I alone in this type of situation?

Oh there's nothing less attractive than a man who reads books during the day.

We have the Virgin 200 service and discovered we were getting under 10% of it through wifi. We have installed wired ethernet to both teens the tvs and office and have zero problems despite concurrent video conferencing and gaming.

We have found Skype servers (I think) struggle at work but home wifi is also likely to be an issue.

Both Skype and online games can be quite the resource hog, so I can understand you might have problems.

But the phone thing for him seems like a good idea, as does an ethernet cable for you. You can also restrict device access during certain times of the day by MAC address, so you can reserve the connection for yourself and he can have it when your day is done.

For now I would order a long Ethernet cable and some cable clips and bodge it in even if it has to go out a window and back in again

For now I would get a long ethernet cable from CPC and bodge it in even if it has to go out of a window and in again, if you can. You're paying for the Virgin service, may as well use it.

You need better WiFi.
But your need for it should be prioritised if your WiFi ain’t good enough.

You might be able to set your device as the priority on your router.

Are you going through VPN to access Skype on your work laptop?

I'm public sector, WFH as well. Skype for Business is an unstable platform - most likely thing is that's the culprit. I have to use it on my work issue iPhone, because the programme is so poor on my laptop for anything other than IM.

Skype is known not to be very robust. It would be far better if you could use Microsoft Teams or Zoom for communications.
It won't be a problem with your fibre broadband.

I have to use it on my work issue iPhone,

Are you not allowed to download Zoom or Teams?

No, we've asked repeatedly for both and been told only the Exec team are trialling them for now 🙄.

Our iPhones are locked down so we can't access the app store etc. We are permitted to join a Zoom meeting if someone outside the organisation sends us a link, but not to set one up for ourselves..... We work in the dark ages on systems which are at least a decade overdue for being binned.

oops

I've been WFH occasionally for years with dual monitors remoting into a Citrix desktop and using Skype within the remote session (as opposed to Skype running on my own laptop or phone). Also virgin fibre and a gaming husband :)

I'm assuming with your current setup Virgin supply both the fibre that brings the broadband signal into your house and the wifi router you use to share that connection wirelessly with devices in your home, probably called a Virgin Superhub.

We had the same setup and I had a lot of dropouts. These are things that helped:

1. Replaced the Virgin router with a separate wifi router. The Virgin one is crap, really underpowered. I replaced it with an ugly one with aerials that got a lot of good reviews on Amazon. Noticeable improvement. (You need to keep the Virgin hub, but you set it to be a modem only and connect the separate wifi router to that)

1. Got a wifi sniffer app to see which channels other networks overlapping mine used, and set my router to use a less popular channel. Minor improvement.

1. Got an external USB wifi dongle that supports 802.11ac and used that instead of the laptop's own 802.11b wifi card. Again picked one with an ugly aerial :) This made a huge improvement but it was a few years ago now, unlikely newer laptops still use 802.11b. However, using an external dongle allowed me to use a USB extension cable to put the dongle with line of sight to the router rather than with the chimney breast in between, and that also improved things.

With those changes I was able to share screens/webcams in Skype meetings over the remote Citrix connection. However audio and video at the same time was still somewhat unreliable.

1. Got the loft converted for a home office and ran an ethernet cable directly from the router. That sorted it :)

To be honest, if you are trying to use Skype on a remote PC desktop, unless you have an ethernet connection I think it's best to dial in/have Skype call you and just use the PC for visual content.

One other thing to consider is powersaving setup. You might find your outages are actually being caused by Windows putting something to sleep. That's a whole other world of troubleshooting pain though.

OP are you saying you have zero WiFi problems when he's not playing his game?

Sounds like something else is wrong. He's correct in thinking him playing his game shouldn't affect your connection stability. Is your internet connection staying up but slowing down massively or is the connection actually dropping off? If it's the latter then it's probably a completely different issue altogether.

@bowbowceo the same thing is happening here, roles reversed. My WiFi is so bad I can’t do anything online even on my phone when my husband is working. So I don’t, I play with the baby, sit and watch tv. It’s horrendous but the one who is working needs to come first. He needs to grow up.

More than likely the trash virgin router WIFI than online gaming which uses surprisingly little data(most are between 50-300mb per hour)

I got one of these boosters as virgin so utterly shite
www.techradar.com/uk/reviews/google-wifi
Made a massive difference

Just to say your DH might not be an arsehole eve though on face of it his behaviour is a bit arseholey. You say he’s in a vulnerable category for Coronavirus & furloughed - so has little to distract from that worry. As well as maybe fears for job security.

Try and have a chat when your both more relaxed. Maybe you can find a tech solution or maybe he can schedule online gaming around your calls.

I know I’ve been a bit arseholey at times over last 3 weeks stress related. And I’m not an arsehole. I hope!

Virgin will slow down WiFi during busy use periods and I imagine that's the afternoon for you.

Have you ran a diagnostic to see what you WiFi is running at at different points in the day?

How close are you working to your WiFi?

Is the WiFi box raised off the floor and in a clear position so waves aren't blocked?

Have you got a booster!? If not that may well be your best option.

(I work from home as norm and above would be checklist to dort it. Plus I purposely moved from Virgin as they were awful at slowing it down).

@bowbowceo first things first, go to www.speedtest.net/ and check your download speed. Is it inline with your package?

Things are being heavily over-used at the moment as everyone is at home.

Online gaming tends to use a huge amount of bandwidth, so it will really destabilise your video streaming in a call. I’m not surprised your call failed. He needs to stop while you’re making calls, which I imagine isn’t all day long.

I think it must be you being too far from the router. I don’t think the game is the issue though it would be worth testing with and without to see if it makes a difference. I doubt it though

Get a WiFi extender like Google WiFi or TP-Link Deco. You will have equal,stable wifi strength throughout the whole house and not only that, but you can also change which devices get prioritized for bandwidth first. (With TP link at least), so if you put your computer than higher than his and your wifi doesn't have enough bandwidth for both, he will lose connection before you do.

Surely the easiest thing would be for you to let him know when you’re on a Skype call and he holds off the gaming for that period.

In the meantime he could assist by looking into ways to solve the issue so you can both use the wifi successfully.

This thread is insane. OP brining in only wage. OP also has to solve internet issues because poor chap can’t play his game? Nonsense.

My dad got me an Ethernet cable that I could plug into the back of the router so it eliminated the wireless bit. But yeah - if it impacts your work, he shouldn’t be playing.

FFS, the OP is the only one earning right now, he can game all evening after she's done working but it's her fault the WiFi is crap and she needs to upgrade it and sort it out. Give over! Of course YANBU. He needs to grow the fuck up. No money = can't pay the internet bill. This!

I can't believe someone said it's not all about you in response to this. That will go down great with the boss...."no boss I haven't been able to complete any work but you must understand it isn't all about me you see, my husband needs to game online".