is wireless really that bad?

ive noticed in counterstrike source that alot of my shots arent registering (ill pull up my scope for the second shot and see that the first one didnt actually miss or ill die and see a blood stain on the other guys head, or something like that happens quite often)

a few people on the game say that wireless is the reason for this bad shot registry problem im having, should i go buy a cable and run it to my room right away, or is wireless not the problem?

edit: i noticed my full question didnt come though..

5 means that wireless is absolutly terrible for gaming, 1 means that wireless shouldnt have any affect on shot registry

 

Problem with wireless is its not as consistent a connection as a cord is, but generally its fast enough for gaming.

 

yeah, so middle of a firefight when there are lots of packets being transferred, is it wireless's inconsistancy thats doing this?

 

i play on wireless no problems here.

 

not too bad if you're next to the router. once in a while it will lag, for a bit (couple of seconds), but just ever so rarely.

 

same here

 

my lap parties nowadays are wireless. ^^ doubles for psp games ^^

 

No probs here on wireless.

 

Ive played CS, GW, UT04 and Quake 4 using wireless without a hitch.

 

Wireless is fine for gaming.


However for intensive downloading (e.g. buying a game through Steam) you should plug in a LAN cable for faster speeds.

 

I think it also depends on the router and your speed

 

A Wireless connection doesnt stop or hinder me from pwning in CSS muhahaha

Okay maybe wireless is 1% disadvantaged compared to a hard-wired connection for gaming but its never bothered me or even noticed the difference.

I get a 1 ping to my router anyway just like a wired connection.

 

Its CS:S' problem...hitboxes lags behind the player -.-'' But that said most of the time I am fine with it

 

There is no difference in gaming for me. I tried even more complicated thing - I started a dedicated Team Fortress 2 server on my laptop, and allowed 4player slots. My laptop was on wireless that connects to the ADSL router 2MBit/s download, and 384 KBit/s upload.

I connected to my dedicated server internally of course, but three of my friends were on different adsl provider, and two on them even sharing the same wireless router successfully connected to my dedicated server and we played for hours without a glitch!

We were practicing defend and some other tactics in TF2 BTW.

The bottom line is - good wireless link (sometimes drops down to slower than 54MBit speeds because the router is behind one thick concrete wall) that serves a dedicated server + 3 Internet players and me (and I am sure more players would be served as well) and all that over not so fast 384K upload ADSL works great! No issues whatsoever! And all that on my laptop! And I am playing at the same time! On the same laptop! 1280x800 all max!

I am using Vista SP1 (final version from MSDN) btw. I have noticed much better performance in wireless transfers in comparison to XP, but again some people swear xp works better. I know only what I saw. perhaps some games work better over cable though?

So for me Wireless is great for gaming.

Ivan

 

I've always used wireless and don't have any such problems when gaming, The only time I've had any connecteion issues was with poor vista drivers for wireless equipment.

I believe there's nothing wrong with wireless IF your drivers are good, IF your router is set up correctly, and if your Internet connection is good to begin with.

I overhear so many people saying that they've changed their wireless package to 10 Mb/s from 2Mb/s because they had an unfair disadvantage in games

 

It's almost impossible to feel the difference if you are not havin a bad quality of connection to the router.

 

Wireless is fine for gaming. I've even tried playing upstairs (the router is downstairs) and I didn't experience any lag problems.

 

Yeah wireless is fine for gaming. I've been using wireless now for surfing/gaming with my laptop upstairs. No issues whatsoever, except with file transfers, but that was fixed with router firmware update.

 

i played TF 2 Wireless and no complaints here...

 

I play all my games on wireless (BF2, TF2, COD4, FSX, CS:S, DOD:S) and I have no problems. I've compared playing games on wireless and wired on my connection and wireless only results in pings that very slightly higher than when wired.

 

Five years ago to say that Wireless "wasn't" fine for gaming held some water. With where wireless is today, it is completely fine to game on.

 

Wireless works fine for me and I don't get any dropouts in signal, and also the added benefit of not being strapped to a desk to do your work.

However when I was downloading with wireless I got around 300-400kB/s download speed but when plugged it with the ethernet cable I got 900-1300kB/s. I also liked the fact that you don't have to wait as long for the ethernet to connect to the internet when you switch the computer on.

So for me I prefer to not use wireless unless I have to.

 

Personally I use wires. Its faster and less connection error prone in my experience. A wired network is safer too. I'll stick to good old wires.

 

The only difference I've noticed is that wireless takes slightly longer to turn on after the computer is turned on. Download speeds and game response time are close enough to the same that I can't tell a difference.

Usual specs are Very Good or Excellent connection (according to XP), up to 16 megabits per second download, and 802.11g wireless. Download time did seem to increase significantly the few times I've used a Very Poor connection, but even the connectivity seemed to stay connected.

In my experience the room you're playing an FPS in has a lot more impact. If you've already tried that, maybe you've got a bit too much security software running and that's slowing stuff down.

 

ok, so by the overwhelming response here im going to rule out wireless as the culprit..

but why do i have 40-50 choke and 5-10 loss while in a firefight? I dont get it, ive tried fixing rates but that doesnt help. Im at a loss as to why i have such high choke and loss all the time.

im starting to worry about my wireless card (Intel 4964ABGN). My friend has an older wireless card (Intel Pro Wireless is older than mine right? im no expert at wireless ) and his ping is always about 20 lower than mine (when we are sitting beside each other) and he doesnt complain about shot registry ever. Is there some kind of a test i can run to check my wireless card?

 

What are your rates settings?

 

This is generally a problem with CSS, better explained here

 

As long as your area isn't saturated with wifi, like you have a SNR higher than 20, and you have a quality router, it's indistinguishable from ethernet.

 

i dont remember exactally, but i do believe they are

rate 25000
cl_updaterate 100
cl_cmdrate 100

these are the same rate settings everyone else on the server (including my friend) uses and they experience no choke/loss

 

I always seem to have a problem with wireless gaming. On two different routers I got the same laggyness and on two different routers.
Ethernet will always out-do wireless for connection, if you dont mind the cable trawling up your stairs

 

how about trying to play with ethernet cable plugged and see if that improves connectivity. it may just be that you have terrible broadband.

 

ok.. i plugged in and it didnt fix anything..

There must be something wrong somewhere, because 40+ choke shouldnt be happening!

 

What kind of internet connection do you have?

I don't have any problems here, but I'm on a cable/fiber connection so latency is really low, and a 7.1mbps speed. Packet loss is always 0% while I know you can get 5% easily with (A)DSL.

I usually get 18 or 24mbps to the routeur so my full connection is there. When the 2 other computers are off, I get all the speed I'm supposed too, like the desktop in the basement (780kB/s). My latency in lotro is about 30-48ms

 

according to speedtest.net i have 1900kbps download speed and 220kbps upload speed (but when downloading files off the net it maxes out at 250kb/s)

however, Im not sure what the actual internet speed we pay for is (my father does all that and ive never cared to look).

 

Wireless is the most fantastic thing for gamers. That is, when you can get it to work correctly and consistently. That usually isn't that difficult though.

 

Eh? I've never worked with any wireless that makes my actual latency to increase, they've always been as good as Ethernet for me, unless I stretch the range of my .G router (and we're talking 50 meters then).

 

I download at 1MBps on torrents with no problems. Which is quite alot of streamed data over a shared WRT54 router between 2 other wireless computers using a 24mbps adsl2+ connection.

This is why im confident wireless can easily handle a large chunks of data from the internet

 

o, there is no doubt in my mind that wireless can handle big loads, its just the one lost packet that might have contained my bullet is what im worried about, where on a wired connection that packet would not have been lost

 

It's true, speed test gives 1900kbps while your download files give 250kBps

kbps= kilo bits per second
kBps= kilo bytes per second
1bytes= 8bits

250kB/s= 2000kbps.

From that, I say you are either on 3.0 or 5.0mbps DSL and you are very far from the CO, so you can't get over 2.0mbps. That's not good for online gaming.
Your high lost packets % probably mean that the telephone line is in bad shape / missing filters on the phones. Your latency is probably very high and that's the cause of your problem.

Your signature should give you your ISP

 

Yeah my old plan was 2000kbps aswell and downloads topped out at around 250kbps. Now im on a 24000kbps but im only getting about half that because im about 1.8km away from the DSL exchange

Check your modem stats page, see how high your attenuations are.

 

Eh not bad for me but some games cause minor lags in bf2. I am guessing because of many player on the map. I am somehow playing on speed of 500kb with upload of 120, while most people have like 2000kbs. Its weird,
p.s dl speed of 48kb

 

o, so my internet just sucks then

o well... its the best i can get on the farm

 

Pretty much, or maybe wireless and/or satellite but it's expensive.

 

I'm using wireless - ran into problems before (like disconnections and stuff) but I switched back to Intel 3945abg + XP Pro and it's been working like a charm.

Been enjoying TF2 (=

 

Definitely. I don't know why people automatically associate gaming with expensive and ugly electronics, and dated standards (like continued use of CRTs and rejection of anything wireless).