*spin-off* Wireless Vs Wired

[tha_con]

Yeah, the thread here about CoD4 MW2 is on fire with activity. Oh wait

Per the wireless adapter, anyone wanting to play CoD4 MW2 online would be best off with a wired connection. Good non-addition!

It is unlikely that you will notice any difference between your wired connection and a wireless connection, unless your signal is unstable due to large amounts of interference (in which case the newly announced Wireless N adapter should help significantly).

Are your internet speeds faster than 54Mbps?

 

[DrJay24]

Per the wireless adapter, anyone wanting to play CoD4 MW2 online would be best off with a wired connection. Good non-addition!

Why? Do you also recommend people dump their LCD TVs?

 

[Acert93]

It is unlikely that you will notice any difference between your wired connection and a wireless connection, unless your signal is unstable due to large amounts of interference (in which case the newly announced Wireless N adapter should help significantly).

Are your internet speeds faster than 54Mbps?

Well, since you think it is unlikely that I would notice the difference, I would deposite you would be surprised to see the difference in 10-20ms in competitive online play in an FPS.

And most g/b routers don't reach their 54Mbps peaks, but that isn't the point. As I said, latency--not thoroughput. I would take a 10Mbit connection with extremely low latency than a 1000Mbit one with additional latency + extra potential for interference.

Why? Do you also recommend people dump their LCD TVs?

I would NOT recommend a high latency display. Just ask Homer and some of the others here who have had to endure high-latency displays in competitive online games: They. Suck.

So if someone has a choice between (a) lower latency, cheaper solution aka a cable or (b) going for convenience that has higher latency and potential for interference aka wireless for the sake of some setup convenience, from a *gaming experience* POV this is a no brainer.

But go ahead, continue selling wireless as a selling point for online competitive gaming! You got your sales bullet point and yet bash something usefull (like party and cross game chat).



Wireless has its uses (and some customers have no choice), but anyone serious about online gaming, when given a choice, isn't going to spend more to get a worse experience.

This is no different from suggesting a freaking 1080p display with high latency over a 720p display with low latency because it has a bullet point. There may be other factors, but your primary criteria is playing 720p games competively online it is a *no brainer*.

So while I have no recommendation for someone dumping a high latency display they own, if someone is buying *now* I think the choice is obvious with these criteria.

I don't recommend wireless to anyone looking to do competitive online gaming. Why choose yet another layer of latency and additional potential interference when there is a cheap, lower latency connection less prone to interference if performance and experience is your criteria?

 

[DrJay24]

Have you ever pinged your router from a wireless device? How much latency do you think it adds?

 

[tha_con]

I'm more amused that people would honestly think going wired over wireless will increase their chance for performance when you're gaming over a peer to peer network.

I can completely understand wanting a wired connection if you're playing Quake 3 Arena at a LAN party or at a tourney, but if you're just playing Halo 3 online? No.

I play over wireless on my PS3, Wii, DS, PSP, and 360. I still remain competitive, and have fun. Shocker, I know.

Edit: Never mind, this is way off topic, and I'm done.

Excited for MW2, hopefully it doesn't suffer from poor balance like the 1st (and hopefully it has a real clan system this time).

 

[NRP]

Packet loss is also a potential problem with wireless. I paid an electrician to wire my house with Ethernet, mainly for LAN parties but also because, as Josh said, wireless blows for online shooters. I'm not competitive by any measure, but I think I can tell a difference.

 

[obonicus]

Packet loss is also a potential problem with wireless. I paid an electrician to wire my house with Ethernet, mainly for LAN parties but also because, as Josh said, wireless blows for online shooters. I'm not competitive by any measure, but I think I can tell a difference.

Totally, dude. When I played PC games, I could totally feel the difference from my Razer Mantis Speed Mat (confession: I actually owned two). Unless you're getting a ton of interference or poor signal strengths, I doubt you'll feel the difference on your average p2p connection, what you have is mostly placebo effect.

 

[Alkohallick]

.....but I think I can tell a difference.

I think this is what happens with most people, they expect a difference so anything that happens during the game that dosent favor them they blame the wireless connection. Im not saying that its equal to a wired connection just that its not as bad as some would have you to believe.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I think this is what happens with most people, they expect a difference so anything that happens during the game that dosent favor them they blame the wireless connection. Im not saying that its equal to a wired connection just that its not as bad as some would have you to believe.

I think it depends on the wireless router more than anything.

 

[obonicus]

I think it depends on the wireless router more than anything.

Right. It's not so much that wireless connections are inherently bad for P2P multiplayer but that bad wireless connections are bad for P2P multiplayer. Bad wired connections are bad too, but it's harder to get a bad wired connection. There might be a latency difference even on a good conn but if you're already dealing with, what, 50, 70 ms of latency on your typical P2P connection (I'd bet more)? You're not going to see a huge difference just from the wireless overhead.

 

[DrJay24]

The wi-fi latency will be in the noise (<2ms out of 100+), what you guys are probably noticing is confirmation bias, has anyone done a blind test?

 

[tha_con]

I think it depends on the wireless router more than anything.

Well, the router, interference, configuration, and other physical boundries (distance) all come into play with Wireless connection.

Just moving your router a few feet in one direction can potentially improve your signal stability by 20%. As can adjusting the channel you broadcast on.

I still stand by my claim that Wireless gaming is perfectly fine for nearly all peer to peer online games, be they shooters or otherwise. Even in racers, where time is of the utmost importance, it's unlikely that the latency will effect you since the spread will generally be within a half of a second or greater.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well the last time I test with wireless-G in my area, the ping times were slightly slower but not enough that I would necessarily not use it. 20-30 ms additional ping I can adjust to, but then I'm used to the 100-120 ms ping that my connection has. If you are going from a connection that averages a steady 20-40 ms ping, then an additional 20-30 ms can be enough to throw you off for a while until you adjusted.

Correctable packetloss let to some relatively huge lag spikes that just do not exist on my broadband connection. Incorrectable packetloss was even worse, especially when interference made the connection drop packets like a mofo. Making even MMOs (pretty darn forgiving of packetloss) totally unplayable at times.

I've since removed the wireless antenna's on my router, (at the time it was the 3rd best tested wireless connection for consumer routers, and best for under 100 USD) and only do wired connections for all my devices.

Fact is, that in some area's, wireless is just not an option.

I may revisit the issue with Wireless-N. And see if I can just blast away anyone in my neighborhood. Until they get Wireless-N and then we're back to square one of massive interference. Then again a stronger wireless signal just makes my signal available to more people in the neighborhood to attempt hacking.

There's a pretty good reason noone uses wireless LAN for LAN gaming of any significant size.

Regards,
SB

 

[NRP]

What I noticed was that with wireless, sometimes the latency is variable, which makes it hard to adjust for. I have two 360s, one on wireless and one wired, so I can switch back and forth for comparison to see if it is just my ISP. Do this enough times over enough games, and it starts to become apparent there are differences sometimes. Certainly not a rigorous scientific test, but I don't think it's merely a "placebo" either.

 

[DrJay24]

20-30 ms additional ping

You measured 20-30ms additional latency going from wired to wireless?

My crappy 802.11b laptop get 5ms to the router. If you can notice that then you guys have super human reflexes. You TVs are probably adding >33ms.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Assuming you got a good setup its impossible that you will notice difference between wired or wireless in online gaming. Even *if* wireless would be slower, do you really think that on what will likely be a 50+ms, you will notice 1 or 2ms?

 

[PowerK]

Are your internet speeds faster than 54Mbps?

Yes, I've been using 100 Mbps internet connection since 2002 here.

 

[joker454]

I get a ~7ms difference in ping between my wireless 'n' laptop and a wired pc. But it's not so much the ping that's the problem with wireless, it's the consistency. My wired connection is 100% solid, but the wireless will sometimes get much crappier for whatever reason, if only just for a few seconds. Not a big deal for web surfing, but a killer if you are gaming. You can tell when someone online has wireless because they will sometimes glitch, like suddenly hang a left directly into a wall, jump around, or disconnect occasionally. If you have a perfect wireless connection that never gets interference then cool. But after over a dozen routers over the years in various cities, I still have never obtained a perfect wireless connection for gaming so I avoid it.

EDIT: Perfect example, my usually fast wireless ping to google just gave back:

Pinging www.l.google.com [74.125.19.106] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 74.125.19.106: bytes=32 time=754ms TTL=54
Reply from 74.125.19.106: bytes=32 time=797ms TTL=54
Reply from 74.125.19.106: bytes=32 time=836ms TTL=54
Reply from 74.125.19.106: bytes=32 time=729ms TTL=54

Why was it suddenly so slow? Who knows. With wired I don't have to worry about it.

 

[makattack]

All I have to do is play a video stream from hulu, or any of the US networks on my wireless laptop, and it will skip, stutter, stop on my wireless G network. If I want smooth streaming, I have to connect my laptop directly to my router. Solves all the problems.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I doubt that has anything to do with using wireless. Hanging into walls, lagging etc have been around since the beginning of online gaming and can have a whole bunch of (way more likely) reasons other than using wireless.

I ping'ed my router for a couple of minutes. Ping ranges from 1 to 4ms, 2 on average. So that already debunks wired giving you a better ping and I have a cheap asus wireless card and the default router of my ISP which is tucked away in the closet downstairs so no fancy stuff at all.

I dont understand the wireless -> bad ping thinking. Dont you think that when you play online, probably on a server that could very well be thousands of kilometers away, the whole path between the moment your packets leave your router, go to your isp, travel the globe, enter the server and receive server response that its way more likely that somewhere along the path there might be a little hickup instead of that probably less than 10 meters your signal travels within your house?

Again, as long as you have a good signal there really isnt going to be a difference. Yeah, maybe you get a little bit better average ping when using wired because wireless sometimes does take a little bit longer. But really, who's seriously going to argue that he/she is capable of noticing 2ms more?