Online gaming ok with a wireless connection ?

jolie77

jolie77

jolie77

Permabanned
Joined
26 Jan 2009
Posts
526
I have 4mb boradband and have 4 out of 5 bars on my signal. Is gaming ok with a wireless signal ?

I plan to play games like age of empires and Total war games online so I am botherd about slowing the game down for others. Just not sure how much breoadband speed you need

Thanks!!
 
I dont have any problems with my connection 8mbit usually getting 6mbit wireless with only 2 bars out of 5 no slowdown for others.
 
Speed isn't the issue, it's packetloss and latency than can be the issue with wireless connections.

A good starting point is to ping your router and see what kind of latency you are getting. e.g:

ping 192.168.0.1 -n 30
(adjusting ip address to your default gateway, you can find this using ipconfig|@find "Default Gateway")

Ideally you want to be getting 1ms or less, if the max latency is more than a few ms then you need to look at improving your wireless signal (can be as simple as repositioning your antenna).
 
Never had any issues at all with my 2nd PC or PS3, both of which are on a wireless connection.
 
I used to use the wireless with my p5k... Now I moved the router and it sits on my desk and is wired. Can't say I've noticed much of a difference to be honest. Didn't move it closer because of any problems, just because I thought it may help.:)
 
I had loads of problems!! Make sure its a good wireless NIC. I imagine it will be fine looking at other posts. However it was a nightmare for me.
 
mleanz1 said:
I had loads of problems!! Make sure its a good wireless NIC. I imagine it will be fine looking at other posts. However it was a nightmare for me.
Click to expand...

I use a USB dongle and it performs fine, I get 1ms ping from my router and 41ms on Speedtest. Absolutely fine.

I use a Netgear WG111v2 and I sometimes get dissconnections but if you can afford an NIC over something cheaper then get one, I couldn't afford the space inside my pc so I was forced with the dongle.

Online games are perfectly acceptable.
 
i used to play wow on a wireless connection.

tried both a usb adapter and a pci card. Every so often (few mins) i get a lag spike of a few secs where the game would freeze. In the end i got too annoyed and went back to ethernet. this was about 2 years ago though so things may have changed. I would imagine its fine for rts though.
 
The only answer is to check it out for yourself. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes the packet loss is a game killer. Can depend on the quality of the router and nic, the number and type of walls between you and the router, interference from other wireless sources in the area (cordless phones, tv extenders, we have a microwave oven once that used to knock my wireless connection silly).

There are too many variables to give you a straight answer - that's why you're seeing so many conflicting answers above. You'll just have to do a ping test as described above and see for yourself.
 
I dont touch my wireless for anything other than convenience for portable devices (iPod touch etc).

Cabled network is just so much mroe reliale for me. I get connection drops throughout the house on wireless.
 
It really depends on the strength of the signal and whether there is also any interference. I've had my fair share of gaming on wireless networks other the years and I just got fed up of the lag. So, now I am using powerline networking, which so far hasn't let me down!
 
DampCat said:
I dont touch my wireless for anything other than convenience for portable devices (iPod touch etc).

Cabled network is just so much mroe reliale for me.
Click to expand...

This.
My wireless is only used for convenience with my little lappy or repair systems that come in. I game on Cable, I'm very fussy about my connection when I game & like to remove all doubt of any dodgyness that wireless brings. Best Cat5se cable eliminates the possibilitys of gltiches/lag/spikes/disconnection etc etc etc.

Truth be told it's a head thing but then having pings of less than 20 on a 64 man BF2 server is something I am Not going to mess with. Cable is for Serious gamers. :D
 
I had nothing but trouble with ping spikes on my wireless, made CSS unplayable. Wired all the way for me now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom