Gaming via Wireless Broadband

student1

Hey all,

Had a quick browse through the forum and couldn't really find concrete information so I thought I'd post a thread.

I recently purchased 3 3g broadband for my pc in college, to have access to a proxyless net connection primarily for gaming and ventrilo. It's not too bad, but at best I get about 350-400ms ping to World of Warcraft servers (spiking to 750ish at peaks), and FPSs are relatively unplayable.

So, my question is as follows: is there a superior alternative available for gaming, specifically one with lower latency? Bearing in mind that I have no access to either a phone line or a cable line, nor would I be able to install a dish or box on the roof of where I live (Dublin City Centre by the way).

Cheers!

Praetorian

I think ADSL is number 1 for ping reliability. Cable can be brilliant as well. Wireless could be brilliant for a whole month and badly let you down one day you really need it. Too many factors bog it down for a serious gamer in my opinion.

Rattlehead_ie

Cable is the number 1 for gaming, in most cases. Unfortunatly I do not know or have expereince of cable with NTL/Chorus here in Ireland, but in general gaming works better off cable. ADSL would be 2nd with Wireless 3rd I suppose.

The unfortunate thing about Wireless is although its has great potential especially with the likes of IBBs services which give you symmetrical upload and download, it is susceptible to interferance and dropped packets. This of course will not effect anyone browsing net, downloading, uploading and if running a good structured VPN will be great with the speed. Unfortunately gaming along with VOIP rely heavily on low jitter / % of packet loss and ping times. That being said I've a few friends that use wireless and have never complained but this is all "in general" kinda stuff

bandit197

Im using a wireless service with 1024down and 512up. ping is always around 25m/s which is excellent. Your upload speed is very important for gaming. like Praetorian said tho it can let me down about once every 6 weeks or so. Im using it all the time with the ps3 with no problems except as i said every once in a while it can be slow.
I have way lower ping and higher upload than most of my fixed line friends

Chris_533976

I'm on wireless (Amocom in Cork) and the best pings I get to Team Fortress 2 servers are about 60ms. Its higher than the average of people on the servers, but perfectly good nonetheless.

student1

Thanks for the replies!

I'm aware that Cable or ADSL would be superior, had ADSL at home and it was great. What I'm looking for I suppose are the best options available to me (acknowledging that the options may not be great) with the restriction that I have no phone or cable line.

@bandit197: What provider do you use? And where are you located?

Cheers again for the help!

bandit197

Im on Mayo/Sligo Border. Provider is westnet but they are only serving areas in the west for now.