Wi-Fi or Ethernet for gaming: what actually changes

The usual answer is "use a cable", and it's right. The reason isn't the one most people give, though. Wi-Fi rarely adds much to your average ping. It makes your ping uneven, and games mind that more.

What a cable gives you

A network cable is a private line between your PC and the router. Nothing else talks on it, nothing interferes with it, and every packet takes the same time: about a millisecond, every time.

What Wi-Fi does instead

Wi-Fi is a shared radio channel. Your PC, your phone, the TV and your neighbours' networks all take turns on it, and only one can talk at a time. Three things follow:

• Waiting. When the channel is busy, your packet waits for a gap. Usually that's a millisecond or two. Sometimes it's fifty.
• Retries. When a packet is garbled by interference or a weak signal, it's sent again, and again if needed. From the game's side that's a late packet, or a lost one.
• Slowing down. With a weak signal, the devices fall back to slower, more robust speeds, so everything takes longer on the air and the channel gets busier still.

The result is jitter and now and then packet loss: an average ping that looks fine with spikes on top. Why that matters more than the average.

Check your own

You don't have to guess. In a Windows terminal, run ipconfig, note the "Default Gateway" (your router), then run ping -n 100 followed by that address.

• On a cable: every reply is about 1 ms and none are lost.
• On good Wi-Fi: replies of 2 to 5 ms, with the highest not far above the lowest.
• On troubled Wi-Fi: a highest time of 50 ms or more, or lost replies. That alone is enough to feel in a game, before your traffic has even left the house.

If a cable isn't possible

1. Use the 5 GHz or 6 GHz band. 2.4 GHz reaches further but it's crowded and slow. Most routers offer both; pick the faster one on your PC.
2. Shorten the distance. Every wall costs signal. Moving the router, or the PC's antenna, into line of sight often does more than new hardware.
3. Avoid relays in between. A wireless repeater or a mesh point that links back to the router by radio sends everything twice over the air. Mesh points connected by cable don't have this problem.
4. Consider the house's existing wiring. Adapters that use coax (TV) cabling work well where they fit. Powerline adapters vary a lot from house to house; try them with a return option.
5. Quiet the channel while you play. A 4K stream or a large upload over the same Wi-Fi takes airtime away from your game.

Where NoSpike fits

It doesn't fix Wi-Fi, and nothing outside your home can. NoSpike changes the route your game takes across the internet, which starts after your router. If the delay comes from your Wi-Fi, a better route won't remove it.

What it can do is show you where the delay is. The app's network check measures the link to your router separately from the rest of the path, so you can see whether your spikes start at home or further away. If they start further away, that's the part NoSpike was built for: see what causes ping spikes.