Do I need a better Wireless card? Connection occasionally drops

[Macenstein]

Hey there,
My son plays Overwatch.
A LOT. He is complaining that occasionally his internet connection will drop and he gets booted from a match. This doesn't happen often... especially considering how many hours he puts in, but enough that he thinks he wants a new Wireless card.

he currently has this
Gigabyte - GC-WB867D-I PCI-Express x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/tTdqqs/gigabyte-wireless-network-card-gcwb867di

We have FiOS 100 up/100 down service, and his computer is literally 10 feet from the router (albeit through a wall and up stairs).

His speed tests all show a very fast connection. Faster than he needs for gaming.

I don't feel like running cable through the wall, so I guess my questions are:

1 - Do you think it is just the router drops a connection for a second every once in awhile, and he's the only one who notices because he's playing game? I stream some movies sometimes and haven't seen any buffering...

2 - could it be his card, even if it is working great 99.5% of the time? And if so, what would be a more robust card/antenna scheme?

3- could it be interference from something else, and if so, how in the heck would I ever figure that out?


thanks!

- Mike

 

[scout_03]

could you use is card and do intensive streaming to see if you have any drop .

 

[WildCard999]

Try updating the drivers on the wifi card.

 

[bill001g]

It is highly likely #3. Wifi unlikely almost any other form of networking attempt to recover from damaged data. It does this by retransmitting the data. This takes some time to do and this extra time causes random delays between the packets.

Online games unlike almost any other form of internet traffic use the delays between packets to sync the server to the client.

It is the worst possible combination you can have. It takes very little interference from a wifi source outside your house to damage data and cause lag spikes in your game. Other internet things can easily tolerate delays in data so you see little effect unless the interference is huge.

Pretty much no way to really fix this. You try the standard solution of try other radio channels both on 2.4 and 5g. You can reduce the channel width to 20mhz on the router which will increase your chance of finding bandwidth with less competition. This will reduce the maximum transfer speed which does not matter to games but other applications will be affected.

No real way to fix this many times other than to no use wifi. If ethernet is possible that is best other wise you might consider powerline units.