Re: How Demanding Will This Be On Wireless Internet?

Eeeh, little less clear cut than some make it out to be, though it's arguably correct you'll have the lowest latency on a wired connection, *all other factors being equal*.

If your ISP is a satellite ISP for instance, it won't make much difference if you've got fiber between your router and PC at home, or if your ISP has you on gigabit fiber but your traceroute shows that your traffic is being bounced via the parent company of said ISP 7 countries away before routing it to it's intended destination adding a nice 80ms via a comical amount of hops, it doesn't matter than your home lan is 10gbit capable/all wired/packet traffic prioritized.

(i've changed ISPs in the past due to the last scenario)

You can do just fine on 4g/5g (especially the latter) if that's your dedicated gaming connection for instance, provided your routing setup is either dedicated to just you or at least some kind of QoS set up to prioritize your gaming device packets.

It's never quite as simple as "wired is best", though as others have stated and i said at the start, yea, all other things being equal then you'd be better off wired, but it's not the end of the world if that's not an option nor is 4g/5g/wifi "bad" for gaming, it's just not "the best if you can throw money at the problem".

Some 5g peddlers claim (and i emphasize claim here, as the 5g provider in my area certainly can't provide it) to provide wireless house broadband with 5ms latency to the backend, at which point you're generally better off than your average coax broadband provider.

Again though, still have to add latency between your home router and the gaming device, or in the OPs case, whatever his access point is while away.

Been a while since i needed to, but i've used my phone as a travel-AP plenty of times because the hotel net was garbage with both 3g/4g/5g, it works "fine". Not optimal, but certainly better than random hotel networks unless you pay for the business options some provide.(and even then it might be better latency-wise).

4g and up my "oh i absolutely need a dedicated gfx card, you know, for presentations" laptop has been more of an issue than the network connection tbh.

@CyberDymeGaming through wireless connections is done all the time and is only going to grow. How else would mobile gaming have grown so rapidly?

@2042onthemovespecifically asked about the demands of wireless internet. TCP/IP connections over any medium, but in this case a IEEE 802.11 or TDMA, CDMA, etc. standard, are self-repairing and self-correcting. Packet-loss can still occur, but this is usually only if the signal quality / strength is very poor or low and even then, the connection is more likely to be dropped entirely.

To your point though, wired connections should be preferred in general due to its more secure and reliable physical media, if @2042onthemove is able to facilitate that connection. Many laptop vendors these days are dropping wired NICs in favor of built-in wireless adapters, so it may require purchasing something like a USB-to-Ethernet adapter.

Again, my original post provided one potential answer and it is still valid based on the information provided.

Sorry @carsono311 ,

I will politely have to disagree with regards to playing a FPS game like the BF2042 over WiFi or 3G/4G !

Your claim is valid @carsono311 , that more and more games are working perfectly fine on mobile, through WiFi and 3G/4G.  But the distinct difference is here that those games are made specifically with the severe communication protocol weaknesses in mind that are directly linked to the WiFi and 3G/4G data protocols. 

Why do you think that a special group is established within EA to make a specific BF version for the mobile device world?  If you now think its perfectly fine anyway to play the full BF2042 game on the same network infrastructure?  Aka there is no insurance of that packages are received and then ordered into correct sequence upon arrival.  And the assigned data buffers are proportionally small and drop the previous packages upon receiving newer ones when buffer maxes out.  Resulting in severe rubberbanding and missing hit registrations!

For doing your emails, browsing internet pages, watching NetFlix etc is all absolutely perfectly fine through those data protocols.  As all those applications are not time critical in same way and also have built in many seconds of data buffering to restore the full stream in correct data packat order before projecting to the user.  But for FPS purpose, absolutely not OK.

I am OK that technology improves every single day.  And one day it will work sufficiently well also for gaming like BF2042.  But as of today, we are still not there.  And I do have empathy for the folks not having access potentially to a local wired ISP connection to their location.  Matter of fact is though, the gaming experience, especially for all their counterpart enemies in the game is poor as a result.  So can it work in some few exceptional cases, yes probably yes.  Is it the norm to work well.  No, far from it.

Seeing the player's latency, variation and packet loss on the scoreboard should in any case be an absolute must-have in BF2042.

And I would prefer to let the hard data be the decider if any player is adequately connected to play on a given server.  And there I dont care about how they are connected.  Aka I also recognize that also wired connections can at times be terrible poor, so reason why I recommend EA enables the judgement to be objectively data driven.

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@CyberDyme wrote:

... Aka there is no insurance of that packages are received and then ordered into correct sequence upon arrival.  And the assigned data buffers are proportionally small and drop the previous packages upon receiving newer ones when buffer maxes out.  Resulting in severe rubberbanding and missing hit registrations! ...

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@CyberDyme

I must again point out the error detection and correction capabilities of TCP/IP:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_detection_and_correction
Applications -> Internet

The packets should be processed at such a rate to make a buffer unnecessary. If anything a buffer would be the culprit for increases in latency or "lag".

I think ultimately, we are in agreement that gaming over wireless networks is certainly possible and even competitive with wired connections, but overall not as reliable due to a variety of factors.

OK @carsono311 ,

I pulled out some supporting data from UK technical report last year on the mobile networks...

Trust you see here that 3G is with a terrible high latency as baseline for any case of FPS gaming.

Next both 3G and 4G have terrible high levels of jitter.  (Latency variation) Which is actually much worse than high latency on its own, as the server has to reset the connection speeds to the client non stop and then again and again...  Its the jitter that is an intricate part of the technology and their data protocols.  And reason why they are still not good enough for our realtime FPS gaming.

Last but not least, look at the average packet loss.

Absolutely not acceptable for FPS gaming.

This really depends on your setup.

I've played for years on wireless on my desktop (couldn't get an ethernet cable going), but the adapter had 3 antennas and just very good reach.

@CyberDymeSince you are focusing on cellular data networks (CDMA, LTE, etc.) here, I will agree with you.

I do not recommend playing any game requiring a broadband connection over a cellular data network through a hotspot. For all the reasons you listed.

Since @2042onthemove did not specify what kind of wireless will be in use, your concerns are justified. I was merely pointing out the possibility and feasibility of using wireless internet, not what is most optimal or not.

Yes all agreed @carsono311 ,

And I am thanking you also for a great fact based debate.  Mutual respect is great to experience despite we may not always agree on everything, then I still enjoy all your many valid points!  👍

The worst combo in setup we experience in recent years when running BF servers are the desperate hopefuls that connect via 3G on their mobile handsets, and then use them as WiFi hotspots for their consoles to connect to.  Like a double whammy of two weak foundations on top of each other.  And obviously the cellular network is by far the weakest of the two...

At least the local WiFi setup and signal quality is more direct within our own control and authority.  We can try and see if we can find some good detailed tech reports on this from recent years, as just 4-6 years ago, the norm of acceptable packet loss was approx 2% and not until above 4-5% was it considered as bad.  But here again, if its our own, we can throw a bit more money into it and typically get something decent out of it. 

As you mention for the cellular networks (where the providers run them cheap), same effect here if the infrastructure is not properly dimensioned, then congestion will happen and packet loss result as the protocol and buffers can not compensate against that.

Though still not ideal, we have often helped the WiFi sufferers with instead getting them a powerline adapter instead.  As if having a bit too many walls or floor levels between their gaming rig and the modem/wifi AP, then the powerline adapter will be a better way to go. 

Aka this type of gear:

https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-powerline-adaptors

If buying a decent pair of these I would probably think that you always will get a better quality line for your FPS gaming no matter your WiFi alternative.

I've been gaming wirelessly the past year and a half.  I dedicate one of the 5G bands to gaming, while the other is for streaming.  Probably the single best thing to do to reduce latency is to survey the band you are on and ensure you are not utilizing an over provisioned channel that your neighbors are using.  Just pick a channel that isn't heavily used and you'll be good to go.

@skates15I would also expect 5G to easily handle the throughput needed. However, 5G is naturally more limited in its range and it is not as ubiquitous as 3G / 4G networks, hence @CyberDyme's focus on them I assume

Glad you are leveraging it well though and that is a great suggestion to check for overlapping channels with your neighbors.  Well done.

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@carsono311 wrote:

@skates15I would also expect 5G to easily handle the throughput needed. However, 5G is naturally more limited in its range and it is not as ubiquitous as 3G / 4G networks, hence @CyberDyme's focus on them I assume

Glad you are leveraging it well though and that is a great suggestion to check for overlapping channels with your neighbors.  Well done.

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Yeah, its an interesting field of technology and still being improved day by day.  Honestly I had thought the speed and much reduced latency on 5G versus 4G would suffice and make it viable already today.  But practical testing, aka COD in HD mode does still not perform well enough on 5G networks.

Think this report is in public domain without you need subscription:

 https://downloads.ctfassets.net/ob7bbcsqy5m2/5qA0v7gBvflFzZebsiz27W/c65baba0d14b064a2bb85af1be177721/RootMetrics_Gaming_Report_Final.pdf

Also a gamer specific review done 1 year ago here, on the subject:

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/a-new-report-shows-which-mobile-carriers-score-the-highest-in-5g-real-world-cloud-gaming/