this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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I'm actually shocked at how small an amount of people have t-mobiles. It works fantastic and never drops in my area, which is a whole lot better than the cable net I had. My phones are t-mo so the internet (its a gateway they give you, so modem/wifi in one) is $30 a month with no taxes or bs. Straight $30. I think it's $50 if you aren't a t-mo cell customer.
i play games online, and wireless is prone to jitter and lag spikes.
you don’t notice these things when browsing the web, streaming movies, or even downloading large games. but in multiplayer games it’s a problem
i have gigabit fiber in my neighborhood though, so i’m not being forced to choose between shitty cable and compromised wireless
I also game online and have no lag or jitter(unless it's server side and everyone is complaining). Like I said before. I have good ping and zero packet loss. Sounds like you had a bad wifi set up.
Define "good" ping. (Latency is the proper term)
Edit: Nvm, just saw your other comment. 50ms isn't bad.
30ms+ is high for cable in my experience. I was getting routinely in the high teens and low 20s.
On fiber I get less than 10ms.
That's all the way through the gateway using its wifi, too. I'm sure if I plugged in the ethernet cable and skipped the wifi it would shave off like 10ms.
Can't beat it for just $30 a month.
Average ping isn't really the problem with wireless, it's packet loss. But my concern wasn't WiFi, which has gotten pretty good, though still prone to issues with certain home designs and building materials. My concern was cellular networks. 5G reception at my house with two different major carriers (AT&T and T-Mobile) is just OK at best, and I measure plenty of packet loss and lag spikes. It's not a problem for my phone, but I would find that unacceptable for my home internet.
I don't think we will ever reach a point where wireless technologies are as good as a hard connections. All the neat tricks we use to eek more bandwidth out of wireless spectrum like time division multiple access are equally applicable to both copper and fiber optic lines. And those copper and fiber optic lines have the benefits of having much more spectrum available to use, not having to share spectrum with nearly as many devices, and not having usable spectrum limited by line-of-sight. They also benefit from not needing to share nearly as many clients over the same medium, since each individual wire is it's own medium, rather than sharing the same RF medium as every other wireless device in your locale.
There is no packet loss on mine. If I ping 20 packets, I get 20 packets. 100%
20 packets is a very small sample size.
pingalso won't necessarily capture all lost packets over wifi. Many are lost and re-transmitted by the wifi hardware without anything higher in the stack being aware.Look, man. Keep trying to spin things as hard as you can, but my wifi doesn't lose packets, and "higher than the stack" hiding dropped packets is pure baloney, since that would still show a substantial increase in ping time. Stop trying to make yourself feel vindicated for buying expensive internet.
Hey man, I'm just speaking from 15 years of industry experience. Like I said, if you're happy with the performance, that's great. But I can objectively measure (and feel) the difference, so don't go trying to tell me my personal experience is somehow invalid. People should know that there is, in fact, a difference. You're not even addressing what I said about the latency and just getting hung up on packet loss.
Also my internet is not expensive. My city has a municipal fiber network, and I only pay about $50/mo for symmetrical gigabit service. I don't need to "vindicate" myself here. I don't think people should have to settle for wireless internet to get away from Comcast when fiber is a faster option without compromises.
Industry experience in game lag? Ok. I guess I have 25 years experience starting with the original starcraft.....
Industry experience in networking
I think in my part of europe cable is the only realistic solution, every home cellular thing has a download limit. All of the cable offerings here are flat
Latency. Also, wired is always better than wireless. I'll save the long boring explanation for another time, but suffice it to say that wireless constantly has dropped packets, and constantly has to retransmit data.
Wired when you can, wireless when you have to.
Not by much. My average ping on cable was around 30ms with no packet loss. On t-mo 5g it's usually around 50ms with no packet loss.
Fifty is still a good ping. Even for fps gaming. Stuff doesn't get dicey until you've gone over 80. As further, I've had no gaming issues at all with it.
An added 20ms is pretty noticeable in a video game. That's more than one whole extra frame in a game running at 60 fps. Liberal use of client-side prediction means it won't feel the same though, and instead of manifesting as delayed input response, you get more instances of being shot around corners and hits not registering.
But the bigger problem is packet loss, which leads to occasional lag spikes. Just like with frame rates, the average latency isn't the whole story. Those 1% lows are just as important to ensuring a smooth and consistent experience.
I've stated to someone else, but there isn't any packet loss. I can cmd line ipconfig a 20x ping to a server and not lose a single packet.
Also, losing a single frame is nothing. You aren't getting shot when you wouldn't have over 20ms.
Online shooters are always a no win situation anyhow, unless you happen to be one of the top 200 players of that game in your region. Outside of that all the games place you with a bunch of similar stat players. You don't play with all random people. You get grouped up with people like you, so you never really get to even know if you're "one of the best" players or if you're worse than most. You either play them to be extremely competitive and you're one of a handful of players good enough to actually be one of the best, or you're just playing for fun. If you're just playing for fun then 20ms is really, really, not important.
20 packets is a very small sample size.
pingalso won't necessarily capture all lost packets over wifi. Many are lost and re-transmitted by the wifi hardware without anything higher in the stack being aware.This is just not true. I play online shooters pretty casually, but I've been playing them regularly since 2001. When my ping time in Overwatch or Apex goes from the usual 35 to 55-60, it feels pretty noticeable in-game. Even though I'm nowhere near top 500. If you don't notice the difference, that is great, but it doesn't mean everyone else has the same experience.
I'm on T-Mobile via an MVNO for $204/year all-in (Mint, 5GB/month) and have 5G Business Internet through them for the flat $50. Combine that with being exclusively on solar power, and it's cute to hear when the local utilities go down.
Is it as fast as fixed internet? No. Is that relevant 95% of the time? Also no.
The 5GB/month is a big drawback for me. I would blow through that in a couplenof days.
I rarely break 1GB/month given how often I'm on WiFi, and I don't stream anything on my phone (purchased music collection works just fine). I get that's not how we're encouraged to use phones, but it suits my needs.
I set my phone to auto download playlists and podcasts on WiFi, so it isn't really a problem. I think there was one month when I had to buy extra data so far, and that still ends up being cheaper than being on a plan with more data.
Curious question: what does the business internet plan get you over the home plan? I'm on Comcast Business right now, but I'm always looking for better options (plus we're looking at getting a 5G failover at work).
I didn't have a choice when I started looking into 5G as primary internet ... home was not available at my address but business was for whatever reason. "Very Good" signal tends to get me about 200Mbps, with "Excellent" hitting 400Mbps peaks.
Fast wise I'm at around 50 ping with no packet loss and over 400mbps.
Non "speed test" website wise, I will get over 30MB/sec downloads when I'm pulling in a game download from steam, so I know mine at least does over 280mbps in the real world.
I'm sure "location, location, location" on this, and it will vary a lot depending on your area and congestion in that area.
Just FYI steam compresses the data and shows the throughput with compression so the number will be higher than your actual download bandwidth.
T-mos general coverage outside of city centers and interstates is trash (they're all pretty bad, but Tmo is very binary). I'd get it over xfinity, but it's not even offered in my major university town due to coverage limitations. And it's not like there aren't big pipes nearby - the university consumes more than 100TB of data traffic a day; their Netflix traffic alone was so large just 3 years ago that they were on the edge of getting a co-located Netflix rack on campus.
I get you for your area, but that's not the case in my state. Also, t mobile has the largest 5g coverage area nationwide by a large margin. Like, not even close. Area wise Verizon and at&t combined still don't match it.
Well, you're the one who said you're shocked at the small numbers of Tmo customers. It may be a shock in your area if they have good coverage, but in my state they are trash. I have TMo and lose signal anywhere outside a city center. I visit my verrrrry rural parents and get zero signal in a 30 mile radius around their house until I get there and connect to their wifi ... powered by an att-connected 4g router.
Like I said, that's your area(and thats 4g from the att. Not the much faster 5g). Doesn't change that you can look up coverage data from any source you can find. 5g coverage is completely dominated by t-mobile for nation wide coverage right now.
Now cell coverage for 3/4g and just keeping cell signal; Verizon all day.
Yes, my state is far larger than yours, so that may be a difference. We only have 5G coverage in major cities and along interstates.
Did I even mention what stayed I was at in this thread?
No, but I know what state I'm in. You're not in Alaska or Texas or you wouldn't be making these fantastic claims, so by process of elimination, you do not live in a larger state than I.
Then my next question would be why you think a states size has anything to do with getting good 5g coverage and speeds?
Yeah, why would I engage with that sort of disingenuous nonsense. We're talking about cell coverage. Area matters. Period. Full statewide 5G coverage may be possible in a tiny state, but it starts to get bad and then abysmal as states become larger and are mostly rural.
Why do you possibly think that a states size has anything to do with where they place cell towers? Cities barely even care about what state they sit in. Hell, Kansas city is in two states. Cell towers are just put in populated areas. Not populated states.
i think sometimes.. in certain outskirt or rural areas there may be cases when a slow and steady provider (verizon/visible) may be considered a safer option for some.
Safer? It's like half the monthly price, has a ping/latency of around 50, and speeds over 250 mbps with almost no downtime. It's just been a good option.
in rural areas? in all rural areas??
some people have suggested that verizon has more coverage in rural areas but less speed overall.
there are a few exceptions for both providers.
https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/t-mobile-expands-home-internet-to-more-than-450-cities-towns-left-high-and-dry-by-att
https://www.androidauthority.com/what-is-5g-mmwave-933631/
I'm on t mobile in a small city. One big enough that I had charter cable internet before I switched to 5g on t mo.