Is there anything more infuriating than realising your Wi-Fi keeps dropping when you’re in the middle of a live match? You saw you were lagging in the lobby, but wishful thinking forced you to continue. Now, when it mattered the most, the Wi-Fi betrayed you again. Quite a disheartening and frankly rage-inducing experience. Such is the case with gaming on Wi-Fi, or is it? Is a lag-free gaming session really impossible on wireless internet? In this blog post, we’ll answer that question.
We won’t beat around the bush here. Wired gaming setups are always better as they’re much more stable, for consistent speeds, and thanks to both of those factors, there is less latency. For fast-paced professional gaming, the choice is a no-brainer; a wired internet connection is a must.
But, how many individuals are gaming professionally? Most are not, and they simply want to enjoy a nice gaming session with their buddies (or solo, whichever one may prefer) from the comfort of anywhere they want in their house. That is where the freedom that Wi-Fi offers you comes into play and starts to become rather tempting.
When you opt for Home Wi-Fi help with Nerd Alert, our nerds head out on their respective missions. For this task, the agenda is making Wi-Fi well equipped to handle the heavy load of 8K gaming. If a Wi-Fi can handle that, it is more than capable of tackling anything you throw at it at that point.
If you report to us that your Wi-Fi keeps dropping, the very first thing we do is find out why. It’s like if your car isn’t running, you need to figure out what’s wrong before you fix it. We’ll look at everything from the placement of your router, factors messing up the signal, hardware, and software; this should help us figure out where the issues lie.
You’d be surprised by how much the placement of a router matters in terms of Wi-Fi signal strength. If it’s hiding in a corner, behind curtains and a bookshelf, the signal is going to struggle. Smart home devices may still work as they often do not require the same level of signal strength as games do. Ideally, you’d want your router in an open, centralised spot that is at least at eye level so the signal spreads throughout the house eventually. We assume signal can just travel through walls and, yes, it can, but these do interrupt it.
So, Wi-Fi routers work on two frequency bands—2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Think of them like different lanes on a highway. The 2.4 GHz band is like a slow-moving, crowded lane, which is great for basic things like browsing the web. But if you’re gaming or streaming in 4K, you’ll want to switch to the 5 GHz band, which is faster and less crowded but has a shorter range. Nerd Alert can help you pick the best one for your needs and even set your router to switch automatically to the best band, depending on what you’re doing.
If a Wi-Fi is supporting a lot of devices all at once, like your phone, laptop, smart TV, PlayStation, a bunch of smart home devices, etc., things can get rather congested. It’s like everybody trying to talk at once; nobody gets to say anything. Nerd Alert can help manage this by giving priority to devices that need the most speed, allocating them as needed so the important devices run without interfering with the other devices.
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The battle of Wi-Fi 7 vs Wi-Fi 6 wages on within the gaming community, a question long pondered: which one is better? Well, objectively speaking, Wi-Fi 7 is the latest standard and offers faster speeds, lower latency, and better support for multiple devices—perfect for 8K gaming and running a lot of smart home devices. So, it wins, argument over. Right?
Alas, things aren’t as simple. With more power comes a fatter bill. Wi-Fi 7 may objectively be better, but you don’t always need that level of performance if you won’t be putting so much load on your Wi-Fi to begin with. Nerd Alert can offer their Home Wi-Fi Help service to help you make the choice between the two.
As a general rule of thumb, only hardcore heavy gamers require Wi-Fi 7, whereas most users feel Wi-Fi 6 is sufficient for these requirements.
It may seem difficult to get the desired Wi-Fi speeds out of your current setup, and now that may or may not be possible. With our home Wi-Fi help services, we can determine the shortcomings of your current setup and rectify them. Based on your gaming requirements, we can further suggest upgrades, like better hardware or data plans, that you would benefit from investing in. After all, gaming is supposed to be a joy, and Nerd Alert wants you to have a lag-free gaming experience. The only frustration should come from your gaming buddies not following your plan of action, you having to rescue them, and then them complaining it’s their Wi-Fi’s fault.
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