No choice, have to use wireless

D

Diesel_Power

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 23, 2007
Messages
259
So I moved to a new location and the modem and router is located in the basement and my computer is located on the second floor. I've setup a wireless connection to my desktop from the wireless router two floors down.

The internet is still very fast but when I try to play TF2 the lag is horrible. I wish I could setup a direct connection to the modem or router, but that's not going to happen.

Are these wireless gaming routers my only choice? Are they worth the money? Should I get a stronger network card?

The router we have setup is a : D- link DIR-615 Wireless N Router
The wireless network card in my desktop is a : D-Link WDA-2320 Rangebooster G Desktop Adapter
 
Getting yourself a Wireless N card for your PC will make a world of difference since you already have a fairly decent wireless N router.

Why the hell did you get a Draft N router and not get a Draft N card to go with it man!? :p
 
lol! My mom bought them while I was at work.

Now knowing it's my card, can I just go out and buy any card that is Draft N? Or are there some Draft N cards that won't work with my router? What's the best card I can get for my router?
 
why can't you run a LAN cable up? I did it in multiple rooms for my parents from their basement to their second floor rooms. The easiest way I found was to go through the air vents, they typically have clear shots into the basement. Once they get down to the basement wiggle it a little bit to hear where they are, drill a hole in the vent, and pull it through. If you don't need it eventually, just use duct tape to patch the hole.
 
When you say lag is horrible do you mean consistently bad ping, or do you mean smooth for a while, then pauses.
 
damonposey said:
When you say lag is horrible do you mean consistently bad ping, or do you mean smooth for a while, then pauses.
Click to expand...

The game and servers loads quick and fine like usual and when I first get on a server my ping is fine. It's when I start to get into to parts of the game with lots of action that my ping starts to shoot up to 400-500 range, making the game unplayable.

I'll also experience hiccups for a second, every 30 seconds.

What I don't understand is that it worked perfectly fine for the first 2 days we had the wireless setup. I was playing a lot of tf2 lag free and I even played an entire L4d campaign without any lag.
 
What's the signal strength?

The 30 second hiccups 100% of the time in my experience has been the wireless zero service(in windows xp) turning off that service fixes the hiccups.

The ping spikes to 400-500 during action is strange. Make sure no Dlink app is running that came with the wireless card, and let windows manage networks.

For a while I used a linksys wireless B card to a wireless B router and with the wireless zero service turned off, it was very smooth while gaming in DOD:S. If all else fails, you could pick up a linksys wireless card, and test it just to see if maybe it's the card too.

Or get into the router page and see if anything is awry with wireless options. I don't know dlink products that well which is why I'm suggesting basically everything.
 
RaVeNatNM said:
why can't you run a LAN cable up? I did it in multiple rooms for my parents from their basement to their second floor rooms. The easiest way I found was to go through the air vents, they typically have clear shots into the basement. Once they get down to the basement wiggle it a little bit to hear where they are, drill a hole in the vent, and pull it through. If you don't need it eventually, just use duct tape to patch the hole.
Click to expand...
That's not the smartest thing to do as it could cause a fire and any damage incurred from that, your home owners won't cover it - in most cases.
 
Gott said:
That's not the smartest thing to do as it could cause a fire and any damage incurred from that, your home owners won't cover it - in most cases.
Click to expand...

There's no way in hell running a LAN cable is going to cause a fire -- they are extremely low voltage. Truth is, if you cut the end off one and licked bare copper you wouldn't even feel anything. Don't spread BS.
 
silent-circuit said:
There's no way in hell running a LAN cable is going to cause a fire -- they are extremely low voltage. Truth is, if you cut the end off one and licked bare copper you wouldn't even feel anything. Don't spread BS.
Click to expand...

Haha, QFT.
 
silent-circuit said:
There's no way in hell running a LAN cable is going to cause a fire -- they are extremely low voltage. Truth is, if you cut the end off one and licked bare copper you wouldn't even feel anything. Don't spread BS.
Click to expand...

Uh, you ran it through the air vents though. So you have central air, and you're mucking with the heating system for the house? Yeah, I could see the potential for fire hazard here. Not a huge one, seeing as the air is generally not that terribly hot, but the ducting usually can get pretty warm.

Just out of curiosity, why did you drill through the duct? Why not just go through the floor in a spot without expensive hardware? If nothing else you've reduced the value of your home instead of increasing it.

The BEST thing to do would be to patch CAT5 outlets through the wall/floor. Do it right and it's a simple matter of just plugging one cable on one side and another cable on the other. Then you can leave it in place if you ever sell/move and it's an improvement on the house rather than damage.
 
Running cabling through the air ducts is a fire hazard because of the dust bunnies that will accumulate on the cable. Nothing will happen from the cable itself. The dust bunnies however will give any kind of fire a quick and easy route to completely spread through a home.

Anyway, ping spiking like that either comes about from overloading the router or dropping packets. The 615 is a pretty decent router, even though all four hardware versions are completely different. The most likely problem is packing dropping, either poor signal or other wireless signals / microwaves interfering. Try a different wireless channel.
 
I played TF2 wirelessly this weekend too. I was setting up a PC that has a wireless card, and I wanted to test how the game would play on a 2600xt (instead of the usual 8800GTS 512 in my main system). There were several times that the other players would be there and then all of a sudden be in a different spot. I chalked it up to the wireless. However, the PC and the modem was less than 5 feet apart.
 
silent-circuit said:
There's no way in hell running a LAN cable is going to cause a fire -- they are extremely low voltage. Truth is, if you cut the end off one and licked bare copper you wouldn't even feel anything. Don't spread BS.
Click to expand...
Read below because you seem to not understand the potential hazards.

IdiotCow said:
Uh, you ran it through the air vents though. So you have central air, and you're mucking with the heating system for the house? Yeah, I could see the potential for fire hazard here. Not a huge one, seeing as the air is generally not that terribly hot, but the ducting usually can get pretty warm.
Click to expand...
 
There are regulations on running wiring through air spaces not only due to fire hazards, but a fire can cause the casing to release toxic gases in some cases.
 
RaVeNatNM said:
why can't you run a LAN cable up? I did it in multiple rooms for my parents from their basement to their second floor rooms. The easiest way I found was to go through the air vents, they typically have clear shots into the basement. Once they get down to the basement wiggle it a little bit to hear where they are, drill a hole in the vent, and pull it through. If you don't need it eventually, just use duct tape to patch the hole.
Click to expand...

:eek: depending on the age of the house it may not be sheet metal. That's just a bad idea all around.
 
Just to add my $.02, if you want to run Cat5e or Cat6 through your air return, you need to buy "Plenum" cable rather than "Riser". Plenum is rated for running through central air ducts, as it gives off no toxic fumes when it melts/burns.

It is, however, about 3x as expensive.
 
Gott said:
That's not the smartest thing to do as it could cause a fire and any damage incurred from that, your home owners won't cover it - in most cases.
Click to expand...

Ahahahahahha! This guy should get an Award: Joke of the Month

The dumbest thing i have red on the Enthusiast forums.
 
My soho router is in the basement and I live on the 2nd story and have wired lan. I just dropped the cat 5 down the heat vent and it goes strait down into the basement. I drilled a 1/2" hole in the vent at the bottom where there is an elbow and pulled the wire out and plugged it in. It's easy when you can just unscrew the vents at the elbows to grab the wire and push it out through the hole you drilled.
 
Diesel_Power said:
The game and servers loads quick and fine like usual and when I first get on a server my ping is fine. It's when I start to get into to parts of the game with lots of action that my ping starts to shoot up to 400-500 range, making the game unplayable.

I'll also experience hiccups for a second, every 30 seconds.

What I don't understand is that it worked perfectly fine for the first 2 days we had the wireless setup. I was playing a lot of tf2 lag free and I even played an entire L4d campaign without any lag.
Click to expand...

Go to this thread:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1380507&highlight=vista+wireless+autoconfig

To solve your hiccups every 30 seconds. It should fix that completely. This is a Vista specific issue solution as XP doesn't have part of the problem (the other part is easily solved).

As for your major lag issue during heavy action, your router might just be choking. Most, actually nearly all, consumer wireless routers are horribly underpowered and incredibly bloated by their firmware.

For Linksys routers there's plenty of options. For mine personally, I had the same problems as you; router worked fine for a while but eventually just started sucking balls, especially in intense action stuff. Putting third party firmware on it called Tomato solved my problems completely.

I'd google up your specific router and see if there are any like solutions.
 
Do you have a RG6 running to every room? If so, you can pick up a couple of the Actiontec MI424WR routers ($25 on ebay) and use them as MoCA bridges.

Its the router you get with FiOS, it uses MoCA to do Ethernet over Coax, essentially turning your already in place coax network into a high speed LAN.

I have my main MI424WR doing normal duties with my FiOS connection (DHCP, WiFi.. etc), and 3 more with DHCP and WiFi turned off in other spots in my house to supply a wired connection for other PC's. I get roughly 120Mbps file transfers between all the PC's in my house.
 
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