Do you find a difference using wireless over wired?

I'm asking this because many people blame wireless for there lag in games or a slower internet connection even if they have a really good signal. I could see if you had a crappy signal 2 bars or less, but otherwise it should not matter. My outcome when I tested this was different from what you would expect.

I have my laptop below with a,b,g,n wifi connection and a gigabit port. I went over to my friends house where he has one of Linksys's top of the line antenna-less gigabit wireless N routers. He supposed to have 6 megabit download and 450kb upload. He gets 6.5 Mb down and 400 Kb up. Mine is 3.0 Mb down and 320Kb up.

Where I'm going is he has better router and faster internet.
Okay first I connected to his router with N, but not with N speed just because he does not have the right encryption set to allow N speed.
So I'm sitting like 6 ft away from the router with 54Mb speed full signal.

I get a average of 31 Ms response time to my closest server after 3 runs.
The funny thing is when I turned off the wifi and connect though Gigabit that I got a higher ping every time a average of 33 Ms.

Wireless really is not the true reason to make you lag.

Please post your comments on this and your experiences. I might be wrong, but I need proof before I believe it.

Just a side note:
At my house I have a Dir-625 N router 40ft away though 2 if not 3 walls down stairs. Connected the same as his. Max of 54 Mb. I had it set to N speed before, but the driver on my laptop caused it to have blue screens. I have now updated the driver, but have never had the time to try it. I will get a signal of 4-5 bars with 36+Mb. It used to stay mostly at 5 until I moved my desktop in the way next to my laptop. I find no lag at all ever in my games unless I'm doing something else internet intensive at the same time.

 

Personally I find a lot of difference. When wireless, with a wireless-N gaming router, I received a max download speed of around 1.3/1.4mbps. I'm now wired via a homeplug, and have seen up to 2.4mbps. I'm certain that although a homeplug is wired, it's still got some delay compared to being directly wired to the router, too.

When gaming, I decided to test my ping in a server. A player reported I had 150-160ms ping when wireless - the same player reported 70-80 when wired.

Although it's little known there's actually a small delay in wireless packet sending, so it's always going to be slightly slower than wired. I'm not sure why this is, and although only a few ms, this can mean the difference between fragging and being fragged in some fast paced games.

 

Hmm, that's odd. How good of a signal do you have? I could just be older wifi cards. I get full speed with mine.

 

100% signal. I have an Intel 4965 Wireless-N card, less than a year old. It's certainly nothing worth complaining about however I would definitely always prefer wired over wireless, given the option.

 

wireless also depends on interference... same wireless channels used by neighbor, microwave/wireless phone...

it also depends on the router... in my dorm's LAN, direct LAN communication is around 8-10mb/s... with me behind a router(wired, crappy slow WNR834b), it becomes 4mb/s

i am building my own router (800mhz desktop with Belkin PCI Wireless N on master mode-> makeshift 'Access Point')... parts will arrive in a few days, let's see what kind of lag i get

 

I'm in a rather crowded wireless environment (typically, I can "spot" at least 8 to 10 other wireless networks with my laptop), and there is occasional interference that I don't have to deal with when I go to a wired connection. That being said, I don't generally notice the difference, only every once in a while.

 

Yeah, I guess interference could be an issue. My friend's house only has 3 or so networks you can see and my house you only have 1.

 

I think the biggest difference between the two is security. With wired you don't have to worry about people trying to tap into your network over-the-air.

But for me, at home I use Wireless and love it. Free yourselves from cables FTW!

 

Yeah so true. It's so easy to hack WEP keys now. WPA harder but still can be hacked as well.

 

Our wireless laptop gets 50% more speed than our wired desktop. I don't know how unusual this is. The wired computer is old. I am not sure if that is an issue.

 

well, technically that could happen

wired computer = 10/100 ethernet.... 100mbps

wireless laptop = wireless N, up to 260mbps... no interference, strong signal, close proxmity... maybe

 

Its a wirless g. DIR-655.

Wireless laptop is about 15 feet through one wall.