When playing games on wireless..

[soulslicer]

Does anyone experience this kind of lag, where every one minute, the game lags for abt. 5s or so, and then continues as normal.

 

[Dynasty]

Yes.

Its very common, and pretty much the number one reason most players decided to go connect a cable to their router.

Wireless is neater, hell I didnt enjoy tripping over the wire across the hallway on my way to my room as much as anyone else, but it does create that lag you speak of.

Im pretty sure it doesnt matter what router you have.

I used to play WoW with a wireless router, and would experience said lag. The game would 'freeze', and then suddenly rush forward and there would be a fast-forward explosion of magic and numbers etc in raids.

Drove me crazy sometimes, but you get used to it.

And its a nightmare on FPS games online. Try playing CoD:MW with a wireless router and that lag. Haha, its almost impossible.

 

[Shamrock]

Yes.

Its very common, and pretty much the number one reason most players decided to go connect a cable to their router.

Wireless is neater, hell I didnt enjoy tripping over the wire across the hallway on my way to my room as much as anyone else, but it does create that lag you speak of.

Im pretty sure it doesnt matter what router you have.

I used to play WoW with a wireless router, and would experience said lag. The game would 'freeze', and then suddenly rush forward and there would be a fast-forward explosion of magic and numbers etc in raids.

Drove me crazy sometimes, but you get used to it.

And its a nightmare on FPS games online. Try playing CoD:MW with a wireless router and that lag. Haha, its almost impossible.

Now that's just balderdash. I've gamed on wireless for the past... 3-4 years? Yeah, there's lag here and there, but to make a game such as an FPS unplayable? Incorrect. Honestly, I've not had a cable hooked up to me laptop or desktop in the longest. times. ever.

However, you're correct when you say there is a tiny it of lag. I've never experienced it to the point where it ruins your experience completely. I suggest connecting a cable if you feel like there's an excess 'lag'.

 

[Dynasty]

Yeah reading it again makes me realise that 'impossible' is the wrong word to use.

Frustrating is better. Running around a corner on a lag-free spree to suddenly stop moving, burst forward and get killed by someone you didnt see BECAUSE of the lag is annoying.

Youre right that it doesnt ruin the experience. It just depends on what game you play online - something like WoW, once youre comfortable and experienced in a raid or wherever doesnt require, shall we say, as much concentration and reactions as an FPS like MW does (depening on how serious you take it of course).

So in WoW it didnt really matter to me that there was lag, I could happily, and did happily, live with it.

But I took MW seriously because I have an ego problem online, so maxing all the upgrades etc became frustrating when the lag kicks in and youre on a spree.

 

[kazsymonds]

I can play totally lag free over my current wireless network, and my last.

I used to get this problem with TF2 where i would be disconnected every so often, like once an hour or something but that was resolved with a new router.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I play wirelessly. I used to have problems with my old G router and G wireless adapter. My adapter was also a PCI card.

I'm fairly certain I had an issue somewhere I never worked out but I changed my set-up. Firstly you should use a USB networking device as they are positionable near your computer e.g. you can point them towards your router (or change the level its on). That is the best bit of advice someone ever gave me for networking.

I also got a N draft router and N draft wireless adapter which has provided me with a lot more speed. Since this change in hardware I've had no issues.

 

[Quixoticism]

I play wireless on an iMac and have no problems at all. It must depend on what kind of router you have...

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Despite my Belkin Router states that the 802.11e tab has to be selected to allow priority UDP traffic to flow through first, I still have the odd lag-stop for about a second before continuing gameplay on my draft N.

I have yet to see what the difference is without the 802.11e option selected, but am I right in thinking G routers don't have 802.11e facilities?

 

[jimbo118]

I have this problem atm with wireless. Tend to warp for a few secs when playing tf2.

 

[soulslicer]

The thing is, i've found a solution, that seems to work with most of my friends as well. I disabled the WZC Service after I connected to my network. I experienced pure lag-free gaming after that.

 

[kupocake]

Internal cards gave me nothing but trouble, even once I'd found the drivers. My PCI card gave me the same trouble as soulslicer and the PCI-E x1 card I replaced it made me computer restart itself up to ten times before becoming stable enough to enter Windows on any given boot (though once in, it gave a very smooth connection).

I now have some USB thing that works just fine. I think generally, the old guideline that 'internal is better' simply doesn't apply for wireless networking.

 

[The Brick]

The problem is that wireless systems often (not all of them) look for nearby access points to see if there's a better one to connect to. This happens once every 60 seconds, and lasts 5 seconds. Sometimes it's the window's Wireless Zero Configuration (WZC) service that's doing this, but sometimes it's the device driver itself doing it. If it's WZC, just disable the service after connecting to an access point (there's handy tools to do it easily). If it's the device driver doing it, it might not be solvable. I have this problem on my laptop, it's terribly frustrating. Games like TF2 can cope with it, but Quake Live is unplayable.

Just google for 'WCZ lag' and you'll find plenty of resources. I've never been able to fix it on my Acer 5930G (intel wifi 5100), and holy hell I tried.

 

[soulslicer]

It's actually very easy to disable WZC..no need tools for it. It's in services.