- Nov 14, 2003
- 9,811
- 110
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Some 5+ years ago I bought a laptop with a built-in wireless network card. I played around with it on my lan and on the wireless lan at work a few days before I gave up and just started plugging it into the network directly. Basically the wireless would work great for 20-30 minutes and then randomly stop working for a minute, and then come back.
For a casual user I suppose this is acceptable, but I didn't want to deal with lost ssh or remote desktop connections at work, and at home I was usually gaming and getting disconnected was usually fatal.
Anyway, fast forward to today. I'm about to move to a new apartment I'll be sharing with 2 roommates. They currently have internet access on a wireless router. Has the wireless technology improved enough to make this a viable situation, or am I going to have to make a fuss and get the router moved to my room and/or a cable run across the hall? I can deal with the wireless speed being limited to 54kbps or whatever it is, that is fine. What I can't deal with is getting disconnected randomly for no reason, or having significantly worse latency (5-10 more ms might be acceptable, 30+ would not be).
I'm also curious if there are any particular brands or specific products that offer superior wireless. Again, my priority is having a low-latency and stable connection, I'd rather be on a "slow" 802.11g connection than a "fast" 802.11n if the n connection crashes more often.
Cliffs: Is modern wireless networking technology reliable enough for gaming? Does it have a large latency penalty? Any specific brand I should look into to get the best wireless connection?
For a casual user I suppose this is acceptable, but I didn't want to deal with lost ssh or remote desktop connections at work, and at home I was usually gaming and getting disconnected was usually fatal.
Anyway, fast forward to today. I'm about to move to a new apartment I'll be sharing with 2 roommates. They currently have internet access on a wireless router. Has the wireless technology improved enough to make this a viable situation, or am I going to have to make a fuss and get the router moved to my room and/or a cable run across the hall? I can deal with the wireless speed being limited to 54kbps or whatever it is, that is fine. What I can't deal with is getting disconnected randomly for no reason, or having significantly worse latency (5-10 more ms might be acceptable, 30+ would not be).
I'm also curious if there are any particular brands or specific products that offer superior wireless. Again, my priority is having a low-latency and stable connection, I'd rather be on a "slow" 802.11g connection than a "fast" 802.11n if the n connection crashes more often.
Cliffs: Is modern wireless networking technology reliable enough for gaming? Does it have a large latency penalty? Any specific brand I should look into to get the best wireless connection?