wireless networking questions...

[+pcpilot 181]

Wife and I just moved into a new condo and the builders didnt leave us a phone jack in the spare room/office, so I cant do my usual hardwire network in the same room as the computers and which is nearly lag free, espesially with LAN games. I have an netgear WGR614 v6 wireless router that is 802.11g compatable. I can set this up in the front room where there is a phone connection to take advantage of our dsl. This is a 54mb router. My question is, how good of a connection is this type of wireless setup for gaming online? Or via LAN? Will there be much lag?

Edited March 8, 2008 by pcpilot

[+streakeagle 871]

The problem with wireless connections is that you can't predict how good they are going to be.

1 minute you might have a connection that seems almost as good if not equal to being hard wired.

The next minute, you might have no connection at all.

In addition to the quality of your hardware, the environment really determines how well your connection will do.

i.e., are there other devices nearby on similar frequencies?

is someone using a microwave or blender that is causing broadband interference?

I use wireless when I have no choice, but I use a hard wire connection whenever it is available.

The only way for you to know for sure the answer to your own question is to try it.

You should use some ping testing software that has repeatable results so that you can measure the difference between your hardwired results and wireless results.

If you have a solid connection, there should be very little difference... but the question is how stable is that connection over time?

[JediMaster 451]

The other thing is if there are other people in your building using the same freqs/channels you could find intermittent lag/dropouts with no clear cause.

[+pcpilot 181]

Hi Fellas, Thanks for the replies; they make sense and I figured as much. Not sure what to do for our situation. To shell out dough for a wireless system, espesially one of the newer ones seems dubious when I prefer the hardwired setup, for security as well as speed. The problem as I mentioned is no phone line in the room to setup easily. Soooo, might have to go wireless anyway....ack! Anyway, my problem. Thanks again for the naswers...