Need a good connection for gaming in a new house

So, here's the story. My mother just bought herself a new house in a nice suburban neighborhood. Anyway, long story short, construction is complete now, and when she met with the contractors to decide on wiring stuff, she forgot to have them run an ethernet line to my bedroom. In fact, all my room has is power outlets. 12 of them.

Anyway, the main issue with this is that I do plenty of gaming. The cable modem and router are going to be in the basement, 2 stories below my room.

Unless I want to pay thousands of dollars out of my own pocket to have contractors tear down walls that were just built this month to run a line to my room (which is out of the question), it looks like my only options are wireless or ethernet-over-power (basically two adapters that plug into power lines, one at the router and one at my PC), both of which are far from ideal.

Most of the gaming is going to be done on my desktop PC (inb4 DesktopReview, if I felt like waiting a week for a reply I would have posted there already), so if I go with wireless, I'm going to have to buy a wireless-N router and matching adapter for the computer. If I do EoP, I already have integrated 100M ethernet.

So, what's the best option for me? As a gamer, I need a steady, reliable, low-latency connection. Do I go with wireless-N (and if I do, should I get a USB or PCI slot adapter for my desktop?), or ethernet-over-power? Please recommend some hardware in either case, i.e. particular models of routers, adapters or EoP adapters.

Thanks in advance.

 

Have you thought about getting a switch? You could run an extremely long ethernet line to a switch on the middle floor and run another line to your router. But as far as the best way, definitely wireless. One option is getting a AP wireless router, this one would be ideal because it is dual band, meaning that you can have your desktop restricted to one band and limit it to your desktop only. The other option is replacing the router with something like this. For an adapter this one should work. As far as if pci or usb is better I am not real sure. I have used both and they seem to work just about the same.

 

Okay, so if I get wireless, then I want dual band with one band dedicated to my desktop. Thanks.

What's the difference between an access point and a "regular" wireless router?

And running wires anywhere is absolutely 100% out of the question. I personally don't care too much, but it's my mum's house, so I understand why she doesn't want cables all over the place the first day we move in.

 

You don't need to break down the walls to get Ethernet going in a modern house. But you might as well get a good Wireless-N setup for all your other wireless devices and use that to game on. Should be just as good as a wired connection assuming it's properly set up.

 

As long as you use plenum shielded cable (more heat resistant and safer, though I doubt it's up to code), all the ducting likely goes to a central place in the basement If I were going to retrofit my house, that's how I'd do it. Considering we're tearing apart the basement here, I'm probably gonna just see if I can string it sanely through the walls for the most part

But the main thing you want to do is probably go wireless, and then try to place the AP away from any circuit breakers or major plumbing or ducting areas. That can kill performance. If you can, it may be worthwhile to see if you can snake something up like, the cold air return so you can put the AP on the main level instead of in the basement.

 

Thanks for the suggestions so far...but like I said, running wires anywhere through anything is absolutely 100% impossible at this point.

Anyway, I know that Windows 7 and Vista have this annoying refresh every 60 seconds while on a wireless connection in order to scan for new networks...that pretty much cripples my connection when it happens, and when I'm in a game it either renders me useless for a good 10 seconds or times me out entirely. Is there any way to stop this?

 

I think I may have found a good combo deal on Newegg, namely the Linksys WRT320N wireless router and WMP600N PCI wireless adapter, for $20 off the individual prices. These are both wireless-N and dual band. Any thoughts? We're moving in tomorrow, so time is a factor.

 

Just make sure you are on the 5Ghz band and the signal strength is good. The problem with the 5Ghz band is that it degrades faster than the 2.4Ghz. However it is much less populated and has a wider number of channels. So if the signal is good you should not have much issues.

You can also look into the power outlet options. Those generally have worse throughput but may have better latency.

 

Yes, you can stop the windows zero config service in the control panel> services.

 

I tried doing that on my desktop, and it just prevented me from connecting to any wireless networks. >_<

 

You connect first then disable it.

 

Depends on what's plugged in. Refrigerators, microwaves, A/Cs, and central air fans will "lag" you every so often.

If you're up to it (or really, your mom), I'd say the easiest and cheapest way to do it would be to run an outdoor-rated (weather-resistant) Ethernet cable through a wall or door jamb, up the side of the house (hidden behind a gutter downspout), then through (preferably) a windowsill or maybe just through the wall. Caulk all the openings, and drop a cheap switch or hub right there. I've had to do this to pull DSL into a second floor office back when ADSL was the new big thing and the DSL had to be dedicated to it's own wiring (business expense issue). I've also done it for wiring up new rooms for cable. If it's stapled clean to the siding, it's barely noticeable. All it takes is 100ft or so of quality cable, a staple gun, caulking, and a 12-inch drill bit.

 

I say Get the Belking Powerline HD adapters. They work great for me. While you may not get the Gigabit speeds they are rated for, it should be faster than 200MB/s at least.

And as for latency? Well, right now I'm running an altitude server on my mac mini which is plugged into a switch connected to one of the powerline adapters which is then plugged into my main wireless router and from there my cable modem. Now, from my work i'm getting around a 20ms ping. Latency should not be a problem.


Another option you have is to either use MOCA or DECA adapters. MOCA is the ethernet over coax adapters, which usually have 100MB/s+ connection speeds, and DECA is basically the same but made for Directv coax (Utilizing different frequencies basically.)

MOCA adapters are available now, while DECA are still in the testing phase as part of directv's networking everything together initiative.

 

I tried that, and it just booted me from the network.

Holy crap, those Belkin Powerline HD's are $150.

That MOCA adapter looks interesting, although once again, expensive to the point of being silly...I do have a coaxial line in my bedroom, it might be worth looking into anyway. And I don't have DirecTV, so DECA doesn't apply.

Also, let me rephrase what I said about wiring: IT CANNOT HAPPEN IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM, INDOORS OR OUTDOORS, EVER, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

 

Chill. Based on what you wrote I assumed you meant you didn't want to thread through internal walls, which can be a nightmare without the help of an electrician, or feeding the cable up through the floor in some manner that would require interior modifications. Going to have to anger you for a minute here, but I'm not sure you understand how little demolition is required to drop a network cable. Usually all it takes is a hole approximately the size of the cover plate on each end, then conduit and cable are fed through the studs in the wall for basic vertical drop. If it's done right, there's little to no evidence that anything was ever done to the wall. You do not by any means have to tear down the entire wall to place cable unless you're trying to go horizontal. Even then, I'd suggest just stapling cable on the floor in the corner, preferably beneath a baseboard radiator or at the edge of some carpeting.

Anyhow, getting back on track, if the other end of your coax terminates by your router, I'd give serious consideration to MoCa options. The price is only slightly higher than HomePlug / EoP options, and the signal quality is much better. It's basically comparable to direct ethernet, although there is a miniscule slowdown at the MoCa boxes. For gaming performance where a direct cat5e/cat6 isn't an option, MoCa is second best. EoP and wireless are tied for third, each has its own problems with interference and latency.

If you want ethernet over powerline, here's a thread I recalled reading last year that provides info on what the powerline networking experience is like. However, I wouldn't go with the option suggested, it's gotten rather mediocre reviews, and it's a little dated by now.

Belkin Gigabit Powerline HD Starter Kit - my notes so far - [H]ard|Forum


As far as recommending devices, they're all going to run you $100-$150 for decent options. I've tried out the last gen of the LinkSys, and it worked pretty well. I would note that I'm fickle when it comes to networking - wired Cat5e/Cat6 only, so I wouldn't use em myself, but they looked to be mostly stable until something takes a bite out of the power. Essentially, if the voltage drop is so great that the lights dim or flicker, the signal will halt for a moment, then pick up again. The best signals I saw were within the same breaker, but the quality drop across zones wasn't all that bad. You won't be getting GigE, but you also won't be competing for empty channels like with WiFi.

If you go the EoP route, the first thing I would do once it's set up is a persistent ping (e.g. ping -f -t -l 1024 -w 500 8.8.8.8), then run around the house turning on the dishwasher, vacuum, fridge, a/c, etc, and see how much the latency varies. You could also just hook in a power line monitor and do all that before buying the system, but only building superintendents and electricians ever have those.


footnote since someone will ask eventually:
that ping command basically causes a persistent ping (-t) to Google's DNS servers (8.8.8.8) with a realistic usage packet size of 1024 bytes (-l 1024) that won't fragment (-f) and that is realistically the under the latency you want to see (-w 500). Setting -w 500 also prevents the process from getting bogged down by a lost packet, somewhat.

 

Sorry to sound hostile, but I really can't stress this enough. It's not my house, and absolutely no wires can be put anywhere. I understand how reasonably easy it is to actually do, but it just cannot and will not happen.

Looks like I'm going to shoot for the MoCA adapters, then.

 

Yup. MoCa is the best bet. I honestly wish I could do MoCa (DeCa ain't out yet, so...), but when my family fully switched to Directv (It used to be digital cable in the bedrooms and DTV in the office and family room) DTV cut the coax cables running along the side of my house.


In other news, time to go see if dd-wrt is supported on my new crappy router to tie it into my WDS system.

 

I know this solution that has worked for some....try the link for the application you need to resolve your issue.

Home-WLAN Optimizer - Optimize wireless gaming, audio and video streaming...

 

The one thing I might do to improve the MoCa connection is to see if you can try to isolate the coax cable from the TV line (if you're not presently using the coax line for TV). In theory the signal shouldn't interfere, but if they do you may just need to reboot the moca boxes and have them reestablish a link where there's no competition for signal bands.

 

Well, looks like the moderators can close this thread now. Can't get a MoCA adapter because my mother doesn't want me "stealing cable", and can't do PoE because it'll start an electrical fire, and I can't even do wireless-N because G is half the price...yeah, well guess what? It's also been technologically redundant for 3 years. I thought it would be nice to have a connection where I DON'T have to deal with a single bar of connection that cuts in and out and isn't even fast enough to stream Youtube, but hey...I guess I'm just being selfish, and what do I really know about technology after all?

 

You can pick up n routers for under 30....