Went WIRED, EF routers Wow

I bought the most expensive ASUS router the other day, it was around 300 dollars , and still was not satisfied with my internet. It was noticeable in online gaming... So I decided to go wired, and OMGG What a huge difference. I always thought Call of Duty was a laggy game, but I no longer get lags, bullet register all the time and it's just so much better.

The cons, 50 feet cable ran under the carpet.... but well worth it! and returned that garbage overpriced router, it was AC88U I think

Wired will ALWAYS be better than WIRELESS.

A good router though is also important for gaming.

Wireless routers are great, particularly wireless AC. With a properly set-up wireless connection, you get the speeds and latency of a wired connection without having to run a lengthy wire through-out the house. And you can connect to it or disconnect to it instantly without much fuss. IMO anyone having problems with Wifi routers is a result user error or from misunderstanding how to achieve the best speeds.

Or its just an old router with wireless g only.

there are a lot of free wifi troubleshooting tools available these days so it shouldn't be a problem.

That's actually the second most expensive.

https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RT-AC5300/

But wireless -can- be good for gaming provided you have a strong signal, and ensuring that you have a strong signal may require additional steps.

It's not fair to blame the user in every instance when wifi signals can be impacted by a bunch of environmental factors like the the materials used in the construction of the location, interference from outside sources such as 50 other wifi routers in an apartment building, etc.

-Byshop

That would be user error. Same way it would be somebody's fault if they they built a home theater in a concrete bunker and it inevitably sounded like crap. If you use a piece of equipment in an situation that's inappropriate for its use - you simply can't blame the equipment. It has to be used and set up properly. There are very few situations these days that you couldn't get away with a properly set up Wifi network.

People who complain about Wifi routers aren't utilizing them properly. Compared to wired they have very little flaws these days. If someone's using a crappy router in a crappy situation, they can't blame Wifi, only their application of it.

I wouldn't call "living in a densely populated apartment building" an example of "user error". My point was there are simply instances where wifi isn't the best option and not because the person attempting it doesn't know how to set it up.

-Byshop

Inappropriately applying a solution to a problem is user error.

I wasn't suggesting that Wifi is always the best option, nor was I suggesting that it's a person's fault if he has a faulty router. All I'm saying is that if someone makes a blanket statement like "wireless routers are bad", which is an extremely common statement thrown around these days (like the OP was doing), then that isn't an informed opinion based on experience with wireless routers, but rather the opinion of someone who doesn't know what they're doing and would rather blame the technology than themselves.

Congrats op. I only use wifi for phones/tablets. All my pcs/consoles are hard wired. Yeah...it's not even close. I can only vaguely remember the lag of wifi, it's been so long since I gamed over it.

wireless is really unstable. Especially if your in an area with other wireless devices. Even microwaves cause huge interference to wireless routers since it uses a very broad and dirty 2.4 ghz frequency to operate.

Even if you have no interference and a pretty clear line of sight to your device, wireless does add some latency, anywhere from 2-5ms to 20+ ms. Depending on how far and how much the wireless signal has to pass through. Nobody should be running an online game through a wireless router if they can avoid it.

A good way to test your latency with your router is to ping it in dos prompt.

if your router was 192.168.1.1, then you would type ping 192.168.1.1 -t

pings should be around 1ms if wired in, and no more than 5 ms if wireless, any higher and your adding too much latency. If your getting over 1-2ms with wired connection or get any dropped packets, something is wrong.

Yet another person judging wireless routers based on their experience with one ten years ago. Pinging 192.168.1.1 on my wireless connection yielded <1 ms response. Same as wired pretty much.

Modern wireless routers operate at 5Ghz. Not affected by microwaves and it's pretty difficult to get noticeably impacted by interference from other networks with a router broadcasting at 5Ghz.

The only good reason to avoid using wireless for gaming is if you live in a mansion or if it just so happens that your cable modem is next to your PC. Or if your house is made from walls with space-age wi-fi cancelling signals that Byshop thinks people live in.