Wifi speeds vs Ethernet cable - is bandwidth important for smooth gaming?

Hi guys,

I read somewhere in a discussion about very high speed Wifi's (EG: Wifi 6 in the Gigabit range on 5 GHz etc) vs older 2.4 GHz that it didn't necessarily help with smoother gaming?

I've got someone that likes those "World of Tanks" games - the freebie versions with the daily drops.

There was something about low ping and low latency being more important than super-high bandwidth? Is anyone able to help break that down to me in lay-speak? Surely wifi bandwidth would be able to accommodate a few pings? What am I missing?

Please and Thank You.

 

ok, so the absolute simplest way to show it is:
The lower the frequency, the better the penetration of things like walls/metal/whatnot, but the lower the bandwidth. Basically, to use Wifi 6E (and the E bit is important), is that it runs in the 6GHZ band, and it basically cannot penetrate walls, and effectively needs to be line of sight to the device and AP, whereas with the 5GHZ frequency, it will penetrate some things, but i use a rule of, no more then 3 walls, between the AP and the device for the 5GHZ band, and even that is pushing it.

Frankly, if speed isn't an issue, and the ability to run a cable is available, i'd run some cat 6a to whatever device the person who likes world of tanks uses and plug them directly into your modem/router.

To give you an idea about latency, if you visit a modern web page, it often, on average has to contact that web page up to 100 times just to download and render that page, now if you are using wireless, whilst it may only add 1-5ms of "latency" to that web page, if you times that by the 100 times just to access that page, you are now anywhere from .1 to .5 of a second of additional "latency" to access that web page whereas with wired ethernet, latency is often <1ms. To put this into a first person shooter game perspective, your character could have been killed up to a half a second ago before your connection even notices and reports you as dead on your screen on wifi, vs wired ethernet.....

Whilst the numbers above maybe a little off, i think you get what i am saying...

 

To follow on from bcann's post and to address your other question, typically games do not require a significant amount of data for the actual playing (just the downloading), which is why capacity (total available throughput) is less important than latency (the speed of that throughput).

 

I had to use wifi for a few months and on the wifi 6 (802.11ax), through two walls and open air between where the router was and the computer I still got extremely good latency. It was to the point where unless I was a pro gamer I probably wouldn't care about it, and it's only drawback was the lesser speed.

I did buy this antenna to help it connect and had it aimed through a window straight at the point where it was coming from, so it was almost best case scenario, but still, it got the job done. It was more annoying losing the 2.5gbe networking to my NAS than any issue with browsing or games.

 

Yeah my kid plays Rust and a few other shooters via wifi without any complaints as to latency (it helps to have a good network backbone)

 

Difference between wifi and ethernet for "fast" speeds is all about local latency (in the house) for "games"

In a game like WoT the server tells/sends your pc few data packets to move the enemy tank right or that you are turning left. The amount of data traveling back and forth is miniscule. But the speed of this communication is paramount.

(note: this is not like streaming a game where the "whole" screen worth of data (lots of data) is moving back and forth)

Ethernet vs Wifi

Ethernet -
99.99% of the time ethernet cable run less than 50m length will add less than one millisecond ping time from PC to Wifi/Router as long as it is a direct connection with no other users.

On wifi -

• pings can be "nothing" ie 1ms direct line of sight with "few users or device" in a house that sees/has only the one wifi SSID

• But in worst case scenario like in a high rise apartment where you can select literally 20 other wifi SSID the the pings can go up high as 1XXms due to all the devices fighting for signal.

ie in my apartment I can see 15 SSID (other people wifi routers) this would equate to 100 or more mobiles/tv/ipad/washing machine all chatting and interfering with your signal and making pings high like 100ms in bursts.

In the real world.... A game server could be 50ms pings delay away even if located in a different city or 100ms delay in a different country.... and the pings on a wifi could add 1ms (nothing in context) or 100ms doubling the delay across just 10metres of your house if unlucky.