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Is wireless stable yet?

C

Chiropteran

Diamond Member
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?
 
I think connection ability depends on the range of your networking gear and the quality of your gear. I've had my laptop here as far as 200 ft. from the router with not a single disconnection. I've never had a random wireless dropout when i've been within the range of my router. I do all my gaming on my wirelessly connected laptop. There is no difference in latency between my laptop and desktop.

I think Drivers will make all the difference between a functional wireless network and a pain in the ass. After all, most wireless devices are simply a variation on the same wireless chipset with bridge chips between PCI, PCMIA, Cardbus, PCI-e etc. etc.
 
Wireless has always been more troublesome than wired. It's great when it works, but it doesn't work all the time, requiring little tweaks here and there. And the occassional disconnections, too. It's certainly not something like wired network that you can pretty much set and forget, but for day to day use, I guess it's okay.
 
I work for a wireless ISP, I have been 1.25 miles from one of our hotspots and it worked. Is wireless stable? Yes, i think it is, if you have the right gear. I use my old D-link DGL-4300 as my ap now (dhcp-nat disabled) because i run a better router now.
My laptop connects to the Dlink and it never ever drops out. I could ping something a million times and lose mabey 10 packets. As for latency, I'm <1ms from 192.168.0.1, and thats 2 hops, laptop(wireless)>ap>(gigabit ethernet)managedswitch>(gigabit ethernet)router
 
it all depends on your environment...there are too many variables to account for, some that are even out of your control.
 
As jlazzaro said, it all depends on your environment. If your in a spot that has 50 or so other AP's out there, you'll have a lot of disconnects. The better (more expensive) your equipment is, the better it'll be able to handle it. Myself, I'm in a house with 2 other AP's within shouting distance and have no issues. I also know of someone in an apartment with 30+ AP's around them and I wouldn't trust wireless for ultra reliability.
 
Good Point, I forgot to say that. I happen to live in a forest (kinda). inside, i see nothing but my own wifi, Outside i see one or two, So YMMV, Noise plays a big role.
About 1 year ago i was at a robotics competition in tampa florida. Everyone had there own network running, Moving files anywhere in the arena was sad ~200kbs, No matter what channel you were on.
 
I had all kinds of problems with my wireless on my desktop until I got a directional antenna with a 5 foot cable. That helped tremendously.
 
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