Wireless and Games.

[Dax]

Currently in the house we have set up a Linksys 54g router which sounded great at the time. But when i've tried to play (mainly) a First person shooter such as Counterstrike etc. I get irritating "lag spikes" as theyre called.
In other words the ping just rockets up too 999+ then shoots back down which you can imagine can be pretty annoying. Games were fine when i ran on a wired network with one PC acting as the hub (on at all times feeding the web across the network) and according to steam support its due to the wireless service.
Went to disable the windows wireless service but because I use the wireless software instead i didnt need to. Tempted to try wiring into the router itself, running a cable upstairs, to see if it works. Common problem?

[maranatha]

I've certainly had that problem with wireless. I think it depends on signal strength. If you have a good connection then you should be OK but I've had my PC one room away from my wireless router and still had problems. Having a wired connection sorted it out. Far more reliable than wireless.

[dave87]

I got them when using a Belkin PCI Card, switched to onboard ethernet & a WGPS606 and its been fine since

[adam1701]

Dont use belkin at all!
the signal strength that they pick up is rubbish...

[gabriel]

it may due the smart firewall filter of the router.
meaning: when the server pings you in order to find the latency it considers it as scan and blocks the ports and thus momentarily you have the huge ping spikes.

You can either disable that option of the firewall or open the ports that counterstrike communicates with the server.

Had exactly the same problem