Best Gaming Router

We all have laptops, so I am sure you've all delt with the infamous wireless lag.

Don't you wish wireless would be AS fast as wired? I've asked around and some say that is already possible.

So ould anyone of you guys recommend a router that is fast and is ample enough for gaming online? Games like Starcraft 2 or Counter Strike, would be awesome to play online, wirelessly, lag free!

And do any of you already game online wirelessly? Hows that been?

Thanks!


This looks sweeet! But I kinda get the feeling it may be overkill? lol but overkilling lag is not a bad thing =P :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833127243

 

I game on a D-Link DIR655 and quite pleased with its performance. For best performance when gaming wirelessly, invest in a N-rated wireless router as long as your laptop supports the wireless N specification.

If you don't have N capbability (or don't whave a wireless add-in card to support it) then match your laptop's best wireless connectivity spec to a router that supports it.

 

I have a year old Linksys WRT610N that does well for me. The only on-line game I play is D&D Online and I never have lag issues (unless server side).

But I think I am about to pull the trigger and get this one, as the range and throughtput is significantly better according to tests.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122326

Plus, it's cheaper than the one you listed.

Good luck.

 

I have been gaming wirelessly since my second generation Centrino platform notebook. That was with a Mobility Radeon 9700. Never had a problem. Previous "wireless" lag issues tends to be a windows issue where it would look for a stronger signal from other networks underconstant intevals. That can be disbaled. I play CS:S most of the time, my only lag issues comes from the ISP.

I always hear people on servers blaming wireles (netowkr) for lag issues, amussing really.

Even with some low end D-link routers (which I strongly dislike, just never had a good experience with them), I had no issues on the lag front when it was working properly.

 

my cousin has that gaming router mentioned above and it is an amazingly good router with great performance. the wireless is kinda funky with my laptop because it likes to time me out of games randomly but only if the router is set to 2.4ghz mode when its at 5ghz wifi it runs fine. strangely though it only seems to be with my laptop because the two others in that same house run fine.

what makes it even more strange is that it only happens when gaming lol.

 

Agreed. Been gaming with laptop and wireless since ATi 9600. And the issues with lag or disconnects while playing online games like WoW or TF2, yeah we all knew the dude was just trying to leech his neighbor's wireless.

I use the standard crud Verizon sent me and my ping is usually around 50-65 for Bad Company 2 and about 80-120 for WoW. Never had issues with lag/etc.

 

Had issues with our previous two dlink routers dropping connections, not accepting connections, not giving out IP addresses, all these went away when we got a dual band netgear one lol.

Laptop quite happily holds a 300mbps connection on 5ghz and the other 6 PCs in the house hold 54mbps on the 2.4ghz band touch wood never once had it drop a connection.

 

bandwidth and latency are two different things. your monitor's internal processing probably takes 30-40ms. so don't worry about it.

 

I just upgraded to a Netcomm Gateway Series N class. Bloody fast, works a charm with my ADSL2. I've never had issues in the past from wireless lagging my gaming? Maybe I've just not noticed.

 

for most gaming ... any wireless router that works, your not shipping vast amounts of data around, now if you were streaming video all over the house yes THEN you need the speed.

I have been known to get into the occasional online lan party with old Linksys B routers and have no lag induced by the router ( ISP and servers YES )

 

wow thanks for the tips and sharing your experiences.

btw how does one know if they have a Wireless N card?

mine is a intel(R) wifi link 5100 AGN

 

The N in AGN is the hint It supports A, G and N wireless. I myself use G on Intel 3945 i think it is.... it works great. Apart from in england BT HomeHubs (routers from British Telecom) are awful with L4D2 because of random resetting, only with L4D2 for some reason (the only bloody game i play really). Ping is mostly due to servers and ISPs as previously mentioned. Wireless gaming can be done easily on G, not sure about B or A wireless though.


Edit: also, in ur sig i see cpu as 'P87001' i think u mean P8700 no?

 

Yep, wireless is the same pretty much for if I connect via ethernet. Whatever lag issue I may is attributed to the location of the server.

Blizzard with WoW are kind of jerks about that. You would think an EST server would be populated by EST players, then to find out your latency sucks because the server is in Texas...

Wow, that makes so much sense.

 

thank you sir! hmmm im not sure about the P87001 so ill change it =P


So since I have a N capable card, but most of my other computers in my home do not, will that be hard to setup? Any extra steps I must take? Or is a N router only good for N cards?

 

an N router will support A, B and G also, although i suppose it depends on model. As far as i am aware if both are N wireless it will connect in N mode, if not it may connect in G and you have to change a setting somewhere but i would guess it would be relatively simple. Google is your friend and if not, theres the networking and wireless section.

 

I used to use wireless and hated it varying signal quality, dropouts beyond a certain distance, dead spots etc. Even with modern N networks, I still prefer a good old fashioned cable, or homeplug.

 

Well Ethernet cable is always better than wireless in terms of throughput and reliability. Keep in mind that "N" network doesn't have better coverage than "G"- it's technically impossible- same frequency and similar transmit power equals the same distance. 802.11n offers better speed at given range from the router but that's all- meaning when you are far away from the router and "G" is at say 2mbps while "N" does achieve say 10mbps in the same spot but they both loose connection at the same distance from the router/AP anyway.
802.11 n has the supposed advantage of greater throughput but even 300mbps N routers cannot achieve the throughput of 100mbps Ethernet connection just few meters from the router let alone any farther.

Recap- bandwidth/throughput of 802.11n is not needed for gaming. Range does not improve, ping/latency doesn't have anything to do with "n" or "g".
You should look at good hardware- fast CPU and decent amount of RAM for a gaming router. That would allow it to track multiple connections so on without slowing down. Third party firmware is an added advantage.

So for example ASUS RT-N16 has 128MB RAM and 480MHz CPU while Asus WL-520gu has 16MB RAM and 200MHz CPU. Both can run DD-WRT BTW.
You don't have to buy sth as powerful as RT-N16 but don't go for typical 200MHz/16MB RAM home router either.

 

When I had my gaming laptop I had no issues with wireless lag using a Wireless-G connection.

 

If you have N and other PC's have G, then the router will default to G when they are on the network....unless...you have a simultaneous dual band router...basically two routers in the same box...that way you can set up a N network and a G network at the same time.

The two routers in my earlier post do this, as does the Dlink Dir-825&855, Linksys WRT-400n, and several others.

If you are only concerned about online gaming, you don't necessarily need such a router, but it can cut down on network congestion if too many devices/too much bandwidth is used up, which may in turn, cause slow downs as well.

How many wireless devices do you have and what are they mainly used for? Chances are, you can just use a regular N router, which aren't as expensive.

It's not hard to set up for dual networks...lot's of tutorials on the net, manufacturers websites, and you can always ask here.

 

I really dislike how buying Routers is so complicated.

Often enough they are ugly, hard to setup, not reliable, and have all sorts of mumbo jumbo build in firewalls, and protection features that are hard to disable.

My current router is configurered in such a way that it wont allow me to access multiple users, meaning that bittorrent technology won't work, meaning that I cant play World of Warcraft as its being patched. finding 20-30 manual patches for the UK EU version of the game is bloody torture. goddammit.


Somebody needs to make some slick routers with a clean interface, were you can set it up for best possible download speeds, upload speeds, file sharing optimization, gaming performance, wireless performance, casual optimization, ultra protection and such.

 

And what router is it?

 

DGL-4500 is considered to be good, but it's expensive. I had a DGL-4300 for years until it crapped out on me, and was G only. But it routed traffic very well. Could be streaming on one PC, bit torrent on another, and still game reliably. Can be a PITA to set up though. I've been using a DIR-628 and DIR-655 (two different areas of home, DIR-628 as AP) for a year or more now and so far so good.

 

you just need to either open ports manually or just search for PnP feature then enable it (Plug and Play), ports will be controlled automatically.

 

I got a cheap TP-Link TL-WR340G, and it has virtually no lag at all. I get almost the same ping (maximum +8 ms) as my friends who are 2000km closer to the servers.

 

Just about any router will serve you fine--especially if you can install DD-WRT on it. Generally the firmware will matter more to performance than the actual hardware.

 

With gaming, concerns of lag are negligble even with the 19.99 walmart special router. It's all in the configuration. If you seriously want to cut down on lag configure your NAT features accordingly from network device to device. This is coming from someone who's home network consists of 2 Cisco 2410 switches and an aironet ap. I can't tell you how many friends homes I've been to and they have like double or triple NAT networks. That also kills internetwork bandwidth like for home media servers.

EDIT: And always buy network equipment that is going to suit your needs or it's just going to frustrate you to no end.

 

^^This^^

I use an old Linksys WRT-54G. It transformed from a piece of unreliable junk that needed to be reset every other evening, to an amazing piece of hardware with infinite amounts of control once I flashed it to DD-WRT.

 

So true, the WRT-54GL was nice to begin with, after a reflash it makes many of the multi hundred dollar routers look bad, especially for VPN and QoS

 

Totally agree. I bought one of the original models with the 16mb of RAM, and it can do pretty much what my Aironet AP can do (just with less output power). It has some seriously powerful features, for the price I paid for the hardware.

EDIT: The WRT-54g is what I keep in my WarBag

 

you do know there is a setting under advanced wireless to set your transmit power ... it defaults backwards to a lower setting but easily boosts. Default is 75mw and I just kick it up to 120 or so

put a pair of omni antennas on it and boost to 150 or so and you can cover an impressive area

 

Yea, I have my TX set at 175... but thats just with those crappy antenna's. The only thing wrong with that is that one must be in an area with not too many other 2.4ghz transmissions, or the user won't be able to have a very good Tx. At farther distances most Broadcom or Atheros chipsets in these notebooks won't have enough power to x-mit back to the router, even though it may "see" the ntwk just fine.
(forgive me if that doesn't make sense, i'm in a waiting line at mickey's on an HD2)

 

Understood just fine, see if you can find a pair of cheap omni antennas, sometime those stock ones werent the best .. as for running high TX and network being seen but unable to transmit back, I will normally ramp them up if I use a pair in bridging mode ( gets about 1.5KM with directionals nicely )

 

Any router that can run DD-WRT is fine....... 95+% of your latency is going to be due to your internet connection.... unless you have something setup totally wrong your home setup isn't going to matter much... heck you could use old 802.11b and for many games you wouldn't notice much of a difference.

One thing to note.... IF you use wireless to stream video to a HTPC or something similar I recommend getting another wireless access point and running it on a separate channel from your main wireless. At my house I actually run 3 access points (1 for media streaming, 1 for work and 1 for general home laptop use) on channels 1,6,11.... If you have a high use environment that can really improve performance.

Be careful about jacking up your transmit power.... Although you get a stronger signal you also increae noise and make your signal to noise ratio worse. Depending on your environment increasing your power can actually decrease performance.

Another piece of advice. When choosing your channel (1,6,11) you should run Netstumbler or something similar on your laptop first... choose a channel that your neighbors aren't using if possible...

 

Wow, did you read that straight off their box?

 

creative marketing, the latency you need to worry about if between your modem and the ISP, your local latency is NOT a factor.