my ethernet question
 

I have a hand built monster of a computer. However, i am still getting the same latency on games as my old computer. Which i think is due to ethernet cords or my router.

I have a linksys wireless g 2.4 ghz model wrt54GS model router

I have heard that certain ethernet is better then others such as cat 6 but ive only heard people talk about it associated to servers. I talked to a bestbuy guy he said i wouldnt get much more if anything out of that type of ethernet. However, half the best buy guys actually know what there talking about.

I have the highest quality internet my service provides so thats not the issue. I am still getting 290 ms in some games which isnt a lot but is at the same time in games that come down to the wire.

So my question is will cat 6 quality ethernet get rid of some of my lag. Also is there anything else i can do to get some of the lag gone. All be it not a lot its annoying for some of the things i do.

Wire quality can affect ethernet throughput, but if there are no wire faults, changing from Cat5 to Cat6 is not likely to improve your latency issues.

Your best bet would be to use a traceroute utility to determine where the latency youre experiencing comes from. Also, if you suspect your router to be the problem you could connect your computer directly to the modem and see if that helps.

Good luck!

keep in mind that some of the lag may be coming from the game servers themselves and alot of traffic on that server. I have 5mb cable internet service, a AMD athlon 64 4800 dual core processors with 4GB of ram, a Nvidia 8600gt 256mb ddr3 video card and i still occassionaly get lag.
XEL would definitly be able to answer this better.

The only time you will see cat6 show improvement over cat5 is when you are nearing the bandwidth limit of the cat5 (probably cat5e) cable. The cat5 cable you are using to connect to your router will handle 5 to 10 times the bandwidth that your cable modem or dsl will provide. So cat6 cable will not increase performance for you(I am literally surprised that best buy support staff actually answered a networking question correctly, I have horrible luck with best buy techs not having any clue what they themselves or I am talking about).

Make sure you have the latest firmware on your router! Lynksys routers have been prone to performance decreasing firmware bugs (hence the firmware hacks available all over the internet). As mentioned traceroute is your friend! More than likely all your problems are outside of your local network. traceroute will show you the exact hops that are slowing you down.

** No offense to any best buy employees who may be members, I speak of my personal experience only