Wireless Internet for gaming?

lolage

lolage

lolage

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Unfortunately i cannot connect to the internet via wire. Is wireless all that bad?

Also, how much would i be looking at to buy a decent router, with good strength and reliability?

Thanks, Ben.
 
Wireless is good...but i don't know for gaming as I've never tried it :). I think if your close to the router then it should be ok.

Unlike web pages though you don't really notice any 'drops' as you just click refresh or there is a slight pause, with gaming you would probably notice it a lot more.

What kind of signal strength/quality do you get?
 
Wireless is fine, it adds an extra 3-5ms to your ping. Get a linksys wrt54g for £25 and stick third party firmware like tomato on it.
 
I have a netgear router at the mo. My signal strength is low all the time and im forever getting disconnected. :mad:
 
We have the BT Home Hub, and thats doing us fine atm.

Im connected on this pc by ethernet, my brother connects up wirelessly on his laptop (but doesnt play games) and my xbox360 connect wirelessly too.

What im getting at is when im playing the xbox online, there is no lag at all using wireless - im assuming it would be the same for gaming on a pc/laptop wirelessly :)
 
I have just switched from Wireless to homeplug. My issues were two fold and I think only linked to Vista.

1) I had to rely on the the native vista driver, which meant that every minute I was disconnected whilst it looked for a better signal. I could get round this by switching the zero configuration off through the command prompt or using Vista Anti Lag, but it was a pain.
2) The location of my router and my PC was such that although I got what looked like a good signal, it was in fact rubbish. This meant sudden phases of lag and mad pings in games.

I switched to homeplug, it took about five minutes to do and I am a happy bunny.
 
andywalsh said:
I have just switched from Wireless to homeplug. My issues were two fold and I think only linked to Vista.

1) I had to rely on the the native vista driver, which meant that every minute I was disconnected whilst it looked for a better signal. I could get round this by switching the zero configuration off through the command prompt or using Vista Anti Lag, but it was a pain.
2) The location of my router and my PC was such that although I got what looked like a good signal, it was in fact rubbish. This meant sudden phases of lag and mad pings in games.

I switched to homeplug, it took about five minutes to do and I am a happy bunny.
Click to expand...
Can you explain how homeplug works?
 
2 experiences with wireless for gaming, neither very good. It was too unreliable, swinging from stable to stuttering at random.
 
I've had my PC and recently my XBox 360 hooked in to a Netgear wireless network for a couple of years. It's done the job for me very nicely, and with no apparent/noticeable extra lag issues.

I honestly couldn't imagine connecting up any other way now.

My only advice is to make sure all your network gear matches up. I now use Netgear WPN routers and network cards. I have found that mixing models, (even from the same manufacturer) doesn't seem to work all that well. That said, I've never had any grief with the wireless 360.
 
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lolage said:
Can you explain how homeplug works?
Click to expand...

It is essentially an ethernet connection through your mains.

All our sockets are on the same circuit, but I don't think that it is essential. I bought a Devolo starter kit that has two plug adapters. I connected my router to one via the supplied ethernet cable and pluged it into the mains. Then connected my pc in a similar way in the other room. Switched on PC and it just worked. There is a disc with some software but I have not had the need to install it yet.
 
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