24 replies to this topic

[Hitchhiking Ghost]

As title asks. I'm wondering if it's worth running 20-30 feet of Cat5 across the house. I'm currently on wifi with a Netgear Nighthawk gaming router, and getting decent (60-70) ping on the N. American server.

Thanks in advance!

[Prototelis]

A wired connection is always better.

As to how much of a difference that will make I cannot say.

[justcallme A S H]

Potential? Huge. All about latency and packet loss.

Anything from home structures, composition of walls, surrounding materials, neighbours and how many devices are on the channels etc - it all has varying effects to signal strength and thus quality.

If your wifi has none of these issues, you'll be largely fine.

Could just fire it up, play a bit. If you notice it feels different, run cable.

[DjPush]

Bigly.. Yuge!

[Mystere]

Testing before going overboard with the overkill never hurts.

Edited by Mystere, 23 April 2019 - 05:59 PM.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Depends on what your house is made of.

I've lived in places where I could get a nice, stable, consistent connection two stories up from the router, but where I'm at now- with the same exact router- the connection is all over the place and drops out randomly every few minutes even when I'm in the same room with direct LOS to the bloody thing. The difference? I'm under a metal roof, and on top of a mountain. The house is a giant freaking antenna and I get interference from every wireless signal from cell phones to radio stations for miles. So, I have a cat5 strung between my tower and the router, and hardly ever use WiFi at all because the only thing it's reliable for is web browsing... on devices that don't have an ethernet port.

So, you may not have any reason to hardwire it as long as it works well enough for your needs. If there is any instability at all though, you're better off with the cable, even if you have to string it fifty feet or more. Stability matters far more than speed when it comes to gaming; if your ping is constantly fluctuating because your connection quality is inconsistent, that'll screw you up more than if your ping were just consistently bad.

[CUTE PUPPY LUV]

Cable is always better than Wifi.
But if your wifi has no drop packages and you feel your gameplay is fine, then wifi is fine.
Else use cable.

[Kotzi]

If your connection to the router is good there will be no difference. Your ping/latency wont change. Been using Wifi for a long time myself. Neither Downloadrate nor ping to good servers were bad. If you have stuff that interfers with your Wlan you should use cable or if you dont want that cable across your home use Dlan.

[Ensaine]

Go hard wire.

There is simply too much potential for interference. What's great today can easily be a nightmare when you really need it.

This is why I don't use wireless mice, or keyboards.

[Burning2nd]

I have 2 routers in my house.. farthest away from each other, they are wired together, and the further ones acts as a repeater

but still my computer is wired..

(*17 wireless items normally connected at a time)

simplest way to say this is yes wired is better,

get your self a gig switch and a 2nd router... run the wire from the main router across the house (*assuming to where you are talking about runing the cat5) to the 2nd switch im talking about, then connect your 2nd router to that switch (*also plug your computer in to that switch)

all you have to do is turn off DCHP server on the 2nd router and it will act as a repeater...

it will boost your wifi on that side of the house, and give you ports to plug things in

[Captain Caveman DE]

always, always cable.

UNLESS it involves opening walls etc (any work, actually ). if you can easily get a cable between your pc and router - do it.
if wifi runs fine and cable looks like work, don't.

being lazy > doing unneccessary work

[yrrot]

Even a WiFi connection that appears stable may be (probably is) dropping packets, which can cause some issues. Anytime a packet is dropped, if it is TCP, your system ends up trying to resend it--making the delay to server for that packet double, or worse. Those dropped packets aren't going to make your ping to server appear worse, unless you are dropping a LOT of packets.

The big problem is that it isn't a constant drop usually. It's random times when interference causes the packet(s) to fail, which can be exacerbated by neighbor wifi signals ending up on the same channel and a number of other intermittent issues. Even the best routers can't stop signal interference.

If you can run a wire, it is always better to do so.

[Xiphias]

I had an issue with MWO and WiFi recently after having moved. I would get playable ping some of the time and then really bad spikes at others (due location and number of other networks around). I wasn't in a situation where I was able to run a long Ethernet cable so I ended up trying an Ethernet-over-power adapter which gave me a stable connection without having to run a long cable. Just plug in one by the router and the other by the PC.

It's not quite as good as Cat5 would be, but it's another option you could consider if you want to minimize cables. WiFi just has too much of a chance of being unreliable when you need it most for my tastes.

[- World Eater -]

It's a stable connection and ping is a bit lower.

[Cyanogene]

Get yourself a gaming chair and it'll lower your ping to about 30. Don't forget to warm it up with RGB lighting.

[Hitchhiking Ghost]

Thanks for all the input! I've been debating since we moved in here a year ago, but wasn't sure if it was worth the effort to fish line up one wall, through the crawlspace (no attics in Florida), and back down a second wall.

Looks like I'll schedule a weekend project....

[LordNothing]

about an order of magnitude higher bitrates, less noise from other networks and fewer connectivity issues. but i have the only 5g router on the block and so i dont have those problems. ymmv, especially for urbanites. also if you want to run a centralized nas or a media server, ethernet is better.

but there is no reason you cant have both. my wireless router has a gigabit switch built in so all the computers near the router are hardwired, with the downstairs machines (including this one) on wifi. wifi is good enough for games though.

i also have a couple gimp routers which run ddwrt so they can operate in client bridge mode. you can plug things in there and they will connect to the internet without the router itself being hardwired to anything. its pretty nifty and allows a tivo box and a legacy laser printer to live on the wireless network without actually being wireless.

Edited by LordNothing, 24 April 2019 - 03:24 PM.

[Sug]

Wired my ping is 35, wireless from same router bounces between 35 and 47ish. Router is about 30 feet away on another floor. Really didn't notice any difference while playing.

[w4ldO]

if the only difference between two players is the type of connection used, the one on wired conn will win against the one on wifi
https://www.urbandic...?term=min%2Fmax

[evilauthor]

The wireless in my house is fairly reliable, so I don't feel the urge to run CAT-5 cable all over the place. Much.

When my wireless goes out, it's usually because the ROUTER has gone out and no amount of wire is going to fix that.