Need help with Wireless N

[Boglwe]

Howdy,
I am new to these forums and I need a bit of help. I currently am living in the middle of the hill country of TX using a sprint aircard connected to a Cradlepoint MBR1000, works great. My problem is, the aircards best reception is as far from my office as possible. I do have a direct line of site from the spot of the router thru 2 windows.

The office is outside in a different building. Currently on my lappy which has an internal N card can get 3 out of 5 bars, considered "good." When I setup my tower, is there a very strong PCI or USB wireless N receiver? Or is there a repeater type of situation I can setup. I am worried about a repeater effecting my online gaming; I play Team Fortress and World of Warcraft. Is there a latency issues with repeaters?

If a simply wireless N card is all I might need in the window of my office (which is about 500 feet from the router) that would be great, Just need a good one. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Bogs

 

[thiggins]

I'm surprised that you are having a good gaming experience using wireless. Throughput and latency vary much more with draft 11n than with 11g. Adding a repeater into the mix will increase latency and thoughput variation.

You could try a draft 11n USB adapter, which would provide the best flexibility for placement. I haven't tested any currently, so don't have any specific recommendations.

 

[Boglwe]

Thanks Thiggins, I honestly have found no latency issues with the wireless N router and gaming. I mean, please understand, that I am using Sprint Broadband wireless and the reception on my ranch is pretty bad. I have tested a few receivers and ended with a Linksys Maxrange N USB receiver. Works great. I tried a Netgear PCI card with and external antenna, THAT was pure crap.

 

[thiggins]

Thanks Thiggins, I honestly have found no latency issues with the wireless N router and gaming. I mean, please understand, that I am using Sprint Broadband wireless and the reception on my ranch is pretty bad.

Then, you're right. The ISP connection latency will probably swamp out your local WLAN latency.

It's not so much latency that's an issue with wireless gaming. It is latency variation. With draft 11n especially, the connection throughput will drop to only a few Mbps speed for 1-2 seconds periodically. Not good for any gaming requiring fast response time.

 

[Boglwe]

Then is there a long range Wireless G solution for me? I am willing to break things open as well and mess with the guts. I have to be careful though as there are only a few routers that will do what I need them to do (use aircards directly on the router). So, adding new OS to the router I think is out of the question, but maybe I can extend the range with different antenna or something?

 

[thiggins]

See this thread.