ok here's the problem. The only way to play online games on an xbox at the college i'm at requires you to hook the xbox into your laptop/desktop. I have windows XP laptop, i share the wireless internet connection with the cable from the xbox.
-The Local Area Connection (cable from xbox to laptop) has 100Mbps
-I can connect to 1 of 2 wireless connections available to me.
1) 2 bars out of 5 signal strength, but with 54 Mbps speed
1) 5 bars out of 5 signal strength, but with 11 Mbps speed
So the question is, do i go for signal strength or speed? Which one is better to use? I know neither is very good, but those are my only options. They both seem to work, but i was just wondering what would be better because i'm tired of horrible horrible lag. Also, if any of you have any suggestions to anything in this area let me know, thanks 
Most home internet connections are limited to a rate of less than 11 mbps, so you would probably want to go for reliability rather than speed of the connection. At your college, they might have a faster rate, but your comments suggest that either they do not or there is another limiting factor that keeps you from using the full available speed.
I would suggest going with the best signal strength unless you come up with evidence that it works better with the other connection.
There are two common standards in use for wireless networking at the moment. There are others and slight variants which go faster but these two are the most common.
802.11b - The original wireless standard used, common on the first consumer network cards. This has a rate of 11MBps maximum.
802.11g - Its successor now replacing the 'b' standard. This has a rate of 54MBps maximum.
Signal strength determines how clear the signal is - the better the signal the less likely interference is going to corrupt data so it needs to be resent, slowing the network.
Connecting to the faster connection is still going to be better for you. Even if the slower connection was perfect with no loss due to interference, the faster connection would have to be operating at 80% loss to be equivalent!
| SonLight wrote: |
Most home internet connections are limited to a rate of less than 11 mbps, so you would probably want to go for reliability rather than speed of the connection. At your college, they might have a faster rate, but your comments suggest that either they do not or there is another limiting factor that keeps you from using the full available speed.
I wouldI would suggest going with the best signal strength unless you come up with evidence that it works better with the
other connection. |
10 years ago this would gold true. But today we are using the standards of 802.11g and a few places at 'n'. While it may be true that the slower one has a better connection strength, this means little since the faster connection still has enough strength to operate properly.
The post above mine holds valid. However the post i quoted is mistaken. Just to clear that up for ya.ooook thanks alot. That all makes sense, so i guess i'll just stick with the better signal strength one. To be honest i'm thinking the 11mbps one is messed up or something. I think it's suppost to be 54 but isn't working properly. I'm going to talk to someone about it eventually.
Another thing to keep in mind, which I understand is a bit off topic, is that a wireless connection is going to attribute to some packet loss regardless of its speed, and thus you may often experience "lag spikes" no matter how fast or strong your wireless connection is. I agree with the other members who have suggested that you connect to the 54 Mbps connection but a direct Ethernet connection will undoubtedly be your best networking option whenever available. Happy fragging. well since your are going to use the connection for gaming it would be far more advisable to use the more stable connection as packet loss is a big enough problem anyway with wireless, let alone with only 2/5 reception. 11mbs is more then ample bandwidth-wise anyway
As already stated, your internet connection bandwidth is almost certainly lower than 11Mbps so anything above that is really wasted. Although as I am typing this, my cable connection is actually 15Mbps 
11 should be more than what you need so I would stick with the better signal strength as reliability is probably going to be better in your situation.
