SG Broadband Community

Ok well I have a netgear wireless router model WPN824v2. I also have the xbox 360 wireless adapter. Now there is also two computers in my house online at all times. One is a laptop running vista and the other is a normal desktop running xp. The desktop is connected with a "hard wire" and the laptop is wireless along with the 360. The xbox is upstairs in my room with the router basically right underneath it on the 1st floor. The laptop is also on the first floor. The hard wired desktop is upstairs. Well I notice when I play games such as call of duty and halo 3, I lag a bit. In CoD I will have normally 400-500 ping and in halo it takes about 5 minutes just to find a room in matchmaking. Also in halo 3 I also lag in game. (I have a half ping bar and its yellow rather than a full green bar.) I used the eXtended Range(XR) Feature on my router to hopefully help this a little but its barely noticeable. I was wondering how can I get my 360 "lag free" or "barely lagging" I don't mind lag here and there because thats something to expect using wireless. But I know I can it faster somehow. I have tried bringing my xbox downstairs and putting it directly next to the router and I still have the same lag. Should I just buy a hard wire and run it upstairs? Or are there any tips you guys have that might help me out. This is my first post but that is because I used google to hopefully find some tips and it brought me to this site. Thanks and this looks like a nice community. But this lag is just getting annoying. Thanks

In my opinion, you should just hardwire it. There are a few different disadvantages to using Wireless for low-latency applications (ie: gaming.)

First, there's the fact that wifi operates at half-duplex. Second is the way CSMA/CA (collision avoidance) works. Basically, each time your wireless card sends an Ethernet frame, it first has to wait until there isn't anything else transmitting any data on that channel. After it does so, it then has to wait until it receives an acknowledgment from the Access Point -- which also has to wait for the channel to free up before it can send. It's a vicious cycle :-)