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Today I was playing an online game and the game connection was very poor (the game "lagged"). So I disconnected the game, turned off my wifi connection and started to use a wired connection, then the game network performance goes ok.

Does the wireless physical Ethernet layer affect the game network performance? Would using WEP instead WPA affects game performance?

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Using Ethernet will definitely decrease lag (or latency) when compared with using WiFi.

Any type of encryption will cause latency, whether or not its a noticeable amount of latency is a different story, affected by several variables (how fast the computer and access point can encrypt and decrypt each packet). Because WEP is less secure than WPA, I'd say (at a guess) that WEP is a tiny smidgen faster, but again, probably not by a noticeable amount.

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I am pretty sure it is less the encryption causing the lag and more the fact that data need to travel from the computer to the router wirelessly rather than essentially being connected to the router using an ethernet. The encryption does affect the speed but its negligible compared the the performance hit caused by just wireless transmission. Especially if there is a lot of metal from the room you are using the computer wirelessly and the room where the router is. – Jay Dec 12 '11 at 21:21
You are 100% correct. There is more of a lag due to a bad signal (or connection)(just because there is a signal) than there is due to encryption. Wireless internet is not as fast as wired. – wizlog Dec 12 '11 at 21:25
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