Wifi Issue? o.o

[SLtesterL2]

so i have a laptop which has wifi but i heard if you want the best performance in SL you need wired so how can i fix this?

 

[dd Temin]

Look on the back  of that laptop to see if it also has an eithernet port.

[Peggy Paperdoll]

It's true.  The best performance in SL is wired connection to the Internet instead of wireless.  Not only is it faster but it's not prone to the outside interference that wireless connections have.....your cell phone, cordless house phone, garage door opener (even one of your nieghbor's openers), that geeky teenage tinkering in his bedroom next door, that airliner flying overhead at 35,000 feet communicating with air traffic control.  If something is transmitted over the air, it can interfere with your wireless Internet connection.  All that outside interference makes any WiFi connection less stable than a hardwired connection.  SL does not tolerate unstable connections well at all.

To overcome that is simple.  Get a Cat 5 Ethernet cable and connect it from your computers Ethernet port (on the back or side) to your modem or router.  Unless you have a very low end laptop your computer has an Ethernet connection (RJ-45).  And almost every router and modem manufacturered has the same Ethernet connection for a wired connection.

[WolfBaginski Bearsfoot]

Just to add, there are things you can do to get better results from wifi, and some of the changes that are on the horizon should help (switching from UDP to HTTP and getting it right is the big one). And it's a good idea to connect by a cable when you're changing the router settings.

So what can you do if a wired connection isn't practical?

1: There's software out there which can tell you what other wifi networks are received, the wifi channel they use, and the signal strength. I have a nice program of this sort for my Android tablet, and so it will run on smartphones too. My experience of Linux is the this is a usual feature of the net management tools, but you will need an add-on for Windows. Avoid using the same channel as your neighbours, and that will make a huge difference.

2: Changing the location of your wifi-router can help. Different sorts of housing construction affect this, but walls are usually better for blocking interference than windows. Likewise for the laptop. If laptop and router are in the same room, it makes a huge difference to signal levels you want to receive. Strong signals reduce the effects of interference.

3: Pay attention to the time. Sometimes, you can make a pretty good guess as to when things happen that generate interference. Sometimes it's something you do, such as running your microwave oven. And, sometimes, your ISP is busier than usual, and your connection slows down. And, as the fuss over the current networking bug shows, if you're aware of such things, you have a chance to dodge the problem.

People who have a "clean" environment can get decent results from wifi, but it isn't a plug in and go option. Buying and using an ethernet cable is far easier. Most are about five feet long, it's the standard length in most shops, and I know three different places in my local small town where I could buy one. You can get longer, but always be careful with loose trailing cables.

[Qwalyphi Korpov]

The resident who provided the previous content, if any, has replaced it with this generic statement.

[Rhys Goode]

I usually use WiFi, and have experimented with several routers,  I also travel a bit, and use hotel WiFi when I am on the road.    In my experience, WiFi works fine, as long as SL can talk to the router with low packet loss.  And some WiFi routers experience really bad packet loss when used with SL.  I have yet to see a 2WIRE router that I can use with SL, my link-sys router works fine (most of the time, it gets messed up when the garage door is opening/closing).

I think packet loss must be related to the SL software in some deep way.  If I test my connections with speedtest.net, I hardly ever see packet loss, even for links that perform poorly with SL.  Two ways to see packet loss in SL:  First, from the help, about menu.  THis will tell you all about your SL link, and has packet loss figure down near the problem.  If that number is greater than about 0.1%, you will have problems.  Aslo, you can watch in real time, using the statistics window. (ctrl-shift-1).  And Firestrorm a third way is  the  little bandwidht/packet loss meter that sits up in the upper right hand corner.

If you have moderate packet loss, two things I know can help. 

One is turning off http texture transfers.  This can be done by setting the debug setting ImagePipelineUseHTTP to FALSE.  Or in Firestorm, a check box on preferences>graphics>rendering.

The second is to throttle back the maximum bandwith setting for the viewer.  Sometimes I can turn this down to 300 kbps, and salvage an otherwise unusable hotel connection.

[Sassy Romano]

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SLtesterL2 wrote:

so i have a laptop which has wifi but i heard if you want the best performance in SL you need wired so how can i fix this?

 

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Just be clear about which issue you're looking to avoid or actually solve.  If you don't have an issue using wifi then changing to a wired connection won't cure "performance" if that's due to poor graphics capability, poor cpu, lack of memory or slow disk.