Currently I game on a wireless connection in my house. In my room there are two places I can have my computer in a practical way. The first is right by my door. Here I have very limited problems with connection, but I do not really like where it is in relation to the other furniture in my room. The other is right by my window on the opposite side of my room. I prefer this one because of the view from out my window, but the connection I get is more lacking. Going from 15Mbps down 2Mbps up and 12 ping (the same as my wired) to 6Mbps down 1.5Mbps up and 12 ping. Here in games I start getting lag spikes that cause my ping to rise by an average factor of ten. I have come up with two solutions to solve this. The first is to get a wireless range extender. My worries here are that it would add more latency to my gaming experience. Since I have a Netgear wireless router, I would rather go with option number two. That being to look into getting an ethernet wall port. I remember my friend saying something about them ( I had never heard of them) and how it was just like getting a new electrical socket. I would rather not have to move my computer back to the other wall, so what would you guys think is my best option?
Wired connection is definitely the way to go, i have a RT-N66U and heres a great example. I have a desktop and a laptop. Desktop is connected via CAT5e, and that sits on 1Gbps, and laptop is on wireless. Surfing the web and stuff is fine, but when doing a backup to a media server, then it really starts to show. laptop gives me about 5-10 MB/s and desktop is on 30-50MB/s. (this is partly due to laptops dated network card but you will never achieve speeds via wireless as you would with a cable)
As for range extenders, you basically get a slightly more powerful transmitter/receiver, while it might be simpler to install, but you will get more gain, with an ethernet cable and its more future proof.
Also, as far as i know, its also cheaper to buy some cat5e or cat6 and cable stapler.
Powerline adapters are also another option. They are just little boxes that you plug into the edison power plug on your wall (the same type that you plug your computer and monitor into), one by your router and one by your computer. Run CAT5 from the router to the powerline and then from the other powerline to your computer and you essentially have a wired connection without having to do any digging around in the walls.
I use this powerline adapter myself and it works perfectly. If you have any questions about it feel free to ask but I think it is the simplest way to get a wired connection to your desktop.
Thanks Mitman, I think I will look into that. It costs $85 but that would probably be cheaper than getting a port and then hiring an electrician to wire it all or do it myself. On question though, what are your speeds on that compared to a computer that is directly connected to your modem?
Powerline adapters are great unless your house has old electrical wiring. I was using Netgear 85 Mbps adapters and they absolutely killed my speed. ~15 Mbps on the adapters vs ~60 Mbps when plugged directly into router.
If you have the time you can do it yourself without a professtional. It's exremley easy to do.
The hard part would be getting into your attic or under your house and dropping the line where you want it to go. Sometimes you can just tie a string to an existing wire like a cable wire and pull it back then attach your cat and pull it back into the room you want.
For me, I get the same speed as if I was running straight CAT5. Aezen makes a good point though, the quality of your electrical wiring makes a huge difference in the speed and reliability that you will get. I have nearly new wiring so it works extremely well but I have tried it out on older wiring and the speed are reliability are much worse.
PowerLine connections are going to be slower, I've seen people get such terrible performance out of them that webpages would time out even though you could ping them from the router just fine
If you're wiring is old then yes, you are correct. Most of the time though it works just fine. I game over mine use it for everything. Never had a problem unless the wiring was bad to begin with.