Gaming via Wireless Broadband?

WarriorBlake

WarriorBlake

CAGiversary!
Let me start with a short intro. I've been trying to get internet at my house for quite some time. I'm stuck on dial-up and DSL/cable is out of reach and will be years till I can get at least DSL. I was looking for an alternative when I saw a commercial for Wireless Broadband.

While I will be using the majority of the time using it for just web access and such, i would like to do some gaming on it. My main reason to game would be for Halo 3, sometimes WoW, and the occasional TF2, CS:S, SC or UT 2004. But I am concerned that the latency with the service would be too high to play any of them except SC and WoW.

My next concern would be availability. I have an Alltel Razr and I get full service from where I am at. The service I saw was from a local competing provider that advertised Unlimited 3G access for $40/mo, $119 for the modem excluding $50 rebate, and $25 activation fee. Their availability map seems to show that I can have service, but it is too close to call.

I won't be making the jump anytime soon so I have time to research. I hope I can use this since $40/mo and $145 startup beats $60/mo and $400 startup for satellite. Any comments, suggestions, or experiences are welcome.
 
I have Clearwire Wireless Broadband and you cannot imagine the amount of dick it sucks.

Its fine for downloads but the minute you try to do anything that tries to upload information it falls apart. I'll have 110kb image files fail to upload constantly, and anything over 5mb? Lol, forget it.

Online gaming is the same, you'll have your periods of time where your ping will be decent (talking tf2 here) in the 60's-80's but it never lasts long, you'll be off in the 1k area soon enough. TF2 is one of the few games I can play because of that, since I can switch to a medic or engineer and not be completely useless when the ping spikes come.

Diablo 2 seems to work fine, however, can't tell you why, maybe less information being transfered/smaller packet sizes.

Guild Wars is hit and miss like TF2, 2k pings sometimes 128 others.

Even me and my buddies who are in oregon, when we do some hamachi sc or dow, you'll get the spikes which makes the entire game slow down to a crawl until it recovers.

This is the only experience I've had with wireless broadband, and I gotta say it hasn't been pleasant. I personally will be avoiding it if at all possible, though in your case with satellite being the alternative, I've heard that's even worse.
 
Thanks for the feedback. Either way, it sucks for me. Either I stay with my 3k dial-up for $15/mo. that has it's moments, but still sucks. or go for wireless broadband for $40/mo with better dl, etc. but with a higher price and moments of lag.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top