"Schism" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:UCNxd.19209$(E-Mail Removed)...
>
> "Paul E Mak" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:qL6dndVkTdR8E1rcRVn-(E-Mail Removed)...
> > What's the average like? Your connection won't be a solid 32ms all the
> > time. There's always going to be some interference. Things like (some)
> > cordless phones, microwaves, and even people moving around can affect
> > the ping time. Keep in mind that 32ms is extremely short and little
> > things can make a big difference, if you're counting milliseconds. If
> > the average is in the neighbourhood of 50-250ms I'd say you have a solid
> > connection. 250-500 is ok and anything over 500 you should be looking
> > at what you can do to get it down a bit.
>
>
> Really? I've been told that wireless would work fine for gaming and I
> shouldn't expect more than 5ms ping... it's not a big deal because this is
a
> family computer in the living room, fairly old that will only run older
> games, but I was expecting a much better ping. The ping sometimes jumps as
> high as 1300 but never very often.
Under good circumstances, you should NOT be getting 500ms pings, let alone
250ms pings. I got 250ms pings whyen I was on dialup. If you're getting a
good, consistent 48mb connection, then something's definitely interfering.
The main problem is, what's interfering.
The diganostic (to really do it fully) can be tedious, and time consuming.
But here are some things that might be causing your problems, and things you
could try.
If possible, you should hook up a normal patch cable from the laptop to the
router and see what kind of pings you're getting there. If they're jumping
around as well, you may have a problem on your laptop- ie, the network is
fine, but the laptop is boggled and not responding quickly enough.
After that, you have to start thinking about the larger wireless picture.
802.11 is a very funny protocol which is susceptible to all kinds of ornery
interference- especially when other devices are in the area. If you're in a
dense urban area in say, a condo or apt complex, and there are other waps in
apts around you, this can very much cause your problem. 802.11 goes through
a kind of 'broadcast/handshake' callout (especially if other 802.11 devices
are set to 'promiscuous mode'). All of that "Hello, who are you, oh, not
for me, what's that? Hi, oh, hello, no, you go first, oh, me? Ok, wait...
oh, ok, now I'll go" causes waps to slow down dramatically- basically all
waps have to wait for holes in the conversations of all the other waps
before they'll talk. That's an oversimplification, but that's basically
what's going on. A very good diagnostic tool (which is also a heavily used
hacker tool) is called "NetStumbler" ( a quick google will find it). It
runs on most 802.11 cards. It will force a broadcast of all the waps in
your 'earshot' and tell you things like what their SID is, what their
channel is, (ahem, whether or not they're encrypted/locked down), and what
brand. Channel is a very important designation if you've got a lot of waps
around you. This article:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/972261
Is a good one for learning a bit about what the channel really means. Most
people *think* that say, channel six is totally different from channel 5,
but it's not necessarily. The channels define midpoint ranges in the
spread-spectrum frequency broadcast that the wap does, so simply sticking
your wap on a 'different' channel doesn't guarantee isolation.
Sorry I couldn't specifically help you, but these are areas in which you
should start looking.
Paul
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