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View Full Version : question about wirless network and gaming


adakow
10-09-2008, 02:50 AM
Ok, let me start by saying that I have 3 PCs on this home network. One PC upstairs which is hardwired to the modem/router and two downstairs (one uses a pci network adapter and MY computer uses a USB adapter). The internet works fine on all the computers, streaming media is not a problem. But I do have one problem.

I played World of Warcraft on my old PC (with the PCI adapter) and never experienced any sort of constant lag spikes or whatever. I got my new PC recently, and it doesn't have an available PCI slot so I purchased the USB network adapter and use that to connect wirelessly to my router upstairs. It shows 4 out of 5 bars of signal on my taskbar (it used to show 2-3 but i fixed that and now it shows 4 constant bars of signal, out of 5). I got my new PC especially to play games like World of Warcraft as well as a few other games and I seem to be having a very annoying problem.

Whenever I'm doing something in the game, everything will pause for a bit (characters will run in place, like a regular lag spike, whatever) and then 3-4 seconds later everything will speed up and catch up to what's supposed to be going on in the game. This occurs about every minute and it is VERY frustrating. Like I said, my internet browser and streaming media work fine, except the gaming. I tried another online game, and I had the same problem. I updated the firmware on my router and the same problem still occurs. I brought my PC upstairs to directly connect it to the router and the problem did not occur. I brought the PC back downstairs and the problem continued with the USB network adapter. I do not know where to go from here and need some help because I have run out of options. Can someone help me out please?

P.S. All of my networking devices are Linksys products and I use a Wireless-G router and USB network adapter. Oh, and my ping is always in the "green". Around 150-180 ms which is fine for World of Warcraft. Even if it got in the yellow (250-350ms) on my old computer (and when directly connected into modem/router) these frequent lag spikes never happened. Only now with my USB wireless adapter.

mjc
10-09-2008, 11:43 AM
What other USB devices are plugged into the problem machine?

Are any of the ones plugged in sharing the same controller as the USB wireless? (Look in Device Manager, under View, select 'By connection').

Do you have a wireless keyboard/mouse? IR, RF (Bluetooth)?

Process Explorer (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx) may be helpful here to see if there is something running that happens to be polling something every minute or so...on the right hand side of the page are some links to Mark's blog and some tutorials on how to use it.

adakow
10-11-2008, 03:10 PM
only my mouse is plugged in as USB, in the back of my computer and my USB wireless adapter is in the front of my computer. i think i'm just gonna try plugging in my PC right next to my router upstairs to see if the distance right now is the problem. if the problem i'm having persists, i'll know it's either my router or adapter and if there is no problem, then i'll know that i'll need some sort of repeater or range expander.

and process explorer is a really cool program, but i used it and found no significant spike any time i was playing world of warcraft.