Wireless and gaming?

Dcully

Hi all,i seem to be posting on this forum more than any other on the net recently,all for the wrong reasons though.

No need to go into the details,lets just say my towns broadband slows down to sub 56k speeds at peak times every evening,perfect during the day.

Im waiting 5 months for it to be sorted ,over 30 calls to eircom support,10 calls to complaints,emails,written letters,drummed up names of those in the town ive spoke to who suffer same problem and submitted them to eircom,gone to the local paper, recently contacted comreg.

All to no avail,5 months now and eircom refuse to upgrade the exchange that is now overloaded as the town increases it population..

Ive given up at this stage and wonder is wireless any good for gaming?
I only really download game patches etc,i dont do torrents etc,my main requirement is a good ping for games, which i used to have on eircom before population increase.
Can anyone recomend a good wireless provider for the Monasterevin Co Kildare area if indeed wireless is recomended please.

bugler

I think everyone will agree with me when I say that wireless is probably the least desirable service to be using as a gamer. The ping times are generally high - or worse: inconsistent.

I use Vodafone's 3G modem. The signal I get fluctuates quite a bit, which means the speed of my browsing or downloading can vary. This isn't too much of an issue, as long as I get the end result (i.e the page loads or the download completes) I'm happy. But I know if I tried to game on it it would drive me crazy.

If anyone has a wireless service that contravenes the high/fluctuating ping rules I'd be very interested

smellslikeshoes

bugler wrote:

I think everyone will agree with me when I say that wireless is probably the least desirable service to be using as a gamer. The ping times are generally high - or worse: inconsistent.

I use Vodafone's 3G modem. The signal I get fluctuates quite a bit, which means the speed of my browsing or downloading can vary. This isn't too much of an issue, as long as I get the end result (i.e the page loads or the download completes) I'm happy. But I know if I tried to game on it it would drive me crazy.

If anyone has a wireless service that contravenes the high/fluctuating ping rules I'd be very interested

I don't agree with you at all. Wireless can have fantastic pings. You can't compare 3g/hspda broadband to normal wireless because they are completly different technologies. A good wireless company can easily have <50 pings. Have a look at http://www.broadband.gov.ie it should give you a fair idea what wireless companys if any operate in your area. If you find one ask around here about their quality of service because just like dsl some companys can be great but others not so good.

Redisle

bugler wrote:

I think everyone will agree with me when I say that wireless is probably the least desirable service to be using as a gamer. The ping times are generally high - or worse: inconsistent.

I use Vodafone's 3G modem. The signal I get fluctuates quite a bit, which means the speed of my browsing or downloading can vary. This isn't too much of an issue, as long as I get the end result (i.e the page loads or the download completes) I'm happy. But I know if I tried to game on it it would drive me crazy.

If anyone has a wireless service that contravenes the high/fluctuating ping rules I'd be very interested

That is simply not true at all. As the above poster said wireless is not the same as vodafone 3g. When the op refers to wireless he means having an antenna mounted on the roof and receiveing the signal from a nearby mast. It is called fixed wireless broadband and is totally different from vodafone broadband.

Op i have irishbroadband breeze 3mb and i am very happy with it for games, i get sub 50 pings to the majority of european servers and i have no problems playing games like bf2,fear,bf1942 etc online. See here
for some ping results. There is also digiweb and others to consider.

One thing though if you consider getting irish broadband lots of people me included are having trouble with bittorrent at the moment. They seem to be throttling it.. with a swarm speed of over 1000kbps i get around 10 :mad:
I used to be able to hit 300 no problem! Downloads from servers are fine though so no problem with large game patches etc using a download manager i can easily hit 330kbps.

The reason i originally got wireless is because i am around 5km from the local dsl exchange and the qos would not have been good. I am very happy with it so far though, if eircom are giving trouble like you say i would go for it.

Illkillya

Wireless broadband has the potential to be good for gaming - I've seen a solid 10ms ping to Irish servers on wireless (thats standard fixed wireless btw - don't even consider Ripwave or Clearwire as a gamer). In practice it is nowhere near as reliable for games as DSL. There are a number of factors that affect this ranging from RF interference to bad bandwidth management at the ISP's end. Last I checked, all of the major Irish residential fixed wireless providers (Digiweb, Irish Broadband, etc) were very unreliable for gamers (just check the archives on this board). If you are a casual gamer, playing RTS games and the like, then I would encourage you to go for wireless... but if you're a serious FPS gamer who doesn't like to see 30ms fluctuations and packet loss, then be careful. Local providers could be good, or could be an absolute disaster - the only thing for it is to find a gamer in your area and see what kind of pings he is getting.

bugler

Bah. I had typed out a post but in hitting reply my connection timed out (snort).

In summary: I didn't mean to draw a direct comparison between 3G and wireless per se, apologies for the confusion.

Basically, what Illkillya said. I know from own experience a long time ago(!) that 'serious' gamers here and in the UK would not have been seeking out wireless even if available.

From reading this website it would appear that IBB and Clearwire (I don't know much about Digiweb, and are there other wireless providers?) have fairly bad reputations for their general service, nevermind something as specific as a low and stable ping for gaming. So the OP probably needs to be careful in what he chooses.

Dcully

Thanks a lot guys.
Ok i can avail of lastmile wireless,its the only provider apparently for my area according to the map on that broadband.gov site.

smellslikeshoes

If lastmile is your only option Id stay with your dsl.

Steffano2002

Wireless and gaming? Suicide I'm afraid...

JNive

and with lastmile ? , from the sounds of it, that would be suicide via bleeding to death while being suffocated and stabbed lol

smellslikeshoes

Steffano2002 wrote:

Wireless and gaming? Suicide I'm afraid...

Thats just because bad news travels faster, Hanging around these boards all you ever hear is peoples bad experiences. There are plenty of people that have wireless with great pings but you just don't hear of it cause they have no reason to complain. But I do agree that lastmile would not work out for gaming whatsoever.