internet connection for roaming pc gaming

tedrodgers · 6 Jun 2016 at 14:09

hi guys

im going to be spending quite a bit of time this year in hotels for work and just wondered has anyone else got some good ideas about getting a reliable internet connection to play online pc games?

I am going to presume the hotel wifi (Hilton) is going to be aweful for gaming with massive pings, has anyone tried gaming over a hotel connection recently?

the other option I guess would be to get some sort of mobile 3g/4g adapter, has anyone used those for pc gaming?

its in the Northampton area.

cheers for any advice

ted

HazardO · 6 Jun 2016 at 14:21

I can't see a 3g/4g connection being much better for gaming. Latency and jitter will be higher if you're into FPS gaming, and coverage will be patchy and may drop out while in game. On top of that I'd imagine the bills would be high.

barmyllama · 6 Jun 2016 at 14:51

Depends how good your 4G connection is I suppose.

I've just done a speed test on my phone and got 51Mb down, 4Mb up and 55ms ping.

That was on the Three network and in my experience they tend to be the slowest 4G provider of the main networks.

Bear in mind that if you use your phone as a USB hotspot that some networks limit the data allowance, even if your phone data is unlimited. Three limit me to 2GB a month.

tedrodgers · 6 Jun 2016 at 15:09

I was looking at getting one of those EE osprey boxes, a mate at work has one and gets pretty good connections on it.

Was reading a review and someone mentioned its not too bad for gaming... he doesn't say which games though.

I may borrow one and see what its like at home first.

This never ends well · 6 Jun 2016 at 18:34

I used 4g on a iphone 5s on EE, for about 2months playing bf4, my ping was about 26-34 but every now and then it would go to about 250, worse bit was when i get a phone call it would to 3g and i would kicked from the game as the ping was 999

Zethor · 6 Jun 2016 at 19:11

4g is unstable, one minute it's great, next minute it slows to a crawl for a few seconds so it's not suitable for action/fps games. For other games, there should be no issues.

As for hotels wifi, I haven't been there but I've been to quite a few other places, the networks were generally not bad at all. I prefered hotel wifi to 4g.

Rroff · 6 Jun 2016 at 19:17

Hotels vary a lot - often you'll find that some times of day are ok and other times quite poor - you might find the proxy/gateway/router or whatever system used doesn't work too well with anything other than basic web and video/music streaming type use i.e. ports not opened or locked down or services disabled, etc.

Mobile type connections tend to have high jitter and fair amount of random drops outs/disconnects even when you have an averaged low ping.