Wi-FI Latency

[mryellow2]

Can anyone tell me what sort of response time I can expect from a wi-fi network based off a t-1?

 

[ktwebb]

Assuming your client to AP association is solid, ie.. high signal to noise ratio and good strength, the wireless hop will add anywhere from 1-5 ms on your pings. Beyond that, it would be whatever your ping would be on a wired node.

 

[mryellow2]

Excellent! That's all I needed to know, thank you much =)

 

[spyordie007]

Hold on there, although your average (read most) ping times will remain quite low I've found that occasionally you will have spikes of latency (probably due to interference). Try playing a LAN game over a wireless network and it shouldnt take too long for you to see what I mean, the majority of the time your game will be just fine however ever so often you will get dropped packets due to interference and you will have spikes of latency that are quite annoying. Unfortunetly the likelyness of a packet reaching the destination over a wireless network is much lower (although still very high) than a wired network.

-Spy

 

[mryellow2]

I figure anything's gotta be better than my dial-up

I already suffer from +300ms spikes in various applications. The AP is actually on the opposite corner of an intersection with only 1 small tree in the way so the signal should be very good. Anyway, thanks for all the info! I'll be keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[spyordie007]

well in that case it will definetly be better than the dialup connection.

-Spy

 

[ktwebb]

Unfortunately, if your experiencing spikes and induced packet loss, it's because your hardware is poorly designed or the technology poorly implemented. Interference would not be random generally. XP's zero wireless configuration may be causing you problems however when you speak in broad terms, wireless is more than adequate as a gaming source. Most of my experience is with enterprise level hardware admittedly, however my speedstream SOHO AP/router is fluid and devoid of any inconsistencies when gaming. If you have spikes then you have a few options. Disable Windows Zero configuration and hope that's it, get better hardware, or if you do have some interference, would be relatively contstant unless your talking about 2.4 Ghz phone etc..., adjust your WLAN accordingly. Unless you have neighbors all around on the variouis channels, interference can pretty much be eliminated alltogether. Sure, sometimes you get hosed, but it's not Wi-Fi inherently that is causing the problems mentioned above. You just have to know what your doing, both after and before you purchase your equipment.