Wireless access points, latency and gaming for win.

[Joker]

Last year in an effort to clean up cables I tried to go wireless - that's using just a basic Netgear DG384 and gigabyte pci card.

Signal strength was 'Excellent' and ping times to the router were decent at about 10-30ms. But unfortunately gaming still felt laggy, and unplayable for me. So I went back to wired, and back to having a cable strung across the floor between two rooms...

I can't really explain it, because technically ping times define your lag when playing online? On the saix server I could see my times were around 80ms, but 'felt' like I was playing with 200-300ms. A constant ping-test showed no odd massive spikes, it was pretty stable.

Nevertheless I want to give it another shot, but figure this time I'll try purchase a dedicated Access Point, and cable that to the router. I'm hoping what I experienced above was due to hardware.

So a few questions:

1. Is it actually possible to play online with a wireless network, and get the same performance as a cabled setup? (I'm aware there will be a little extra latency of course)
2. Do dedicated Access Points provide better latency performance, or just provide better signal strengths and coverage?
3. I'm looking at something like the TRENDnet 300Mbps AP, any good?

Thanks for any help!

 

[CorneN]

I am running a Wi-Fi setup at home with a DG384 router and have not had any issues with online gaming thus far. I must say though, I have not tried it cabled. My Ping on the saix servers are 30 and I play FPS.

 

[bboy]

A home wireless setup shouldn't add more than a few (3ms max) to your ping.
Obviously something else was wrong here, crappy routers can do odd things like this.

 

[Conradl]

Most of the work I do involves real time protocols; there should be no visible impact using a WLAN versus wired LAN.