Wi-Fi latency testing

[Zarxrax]

I was curious how much lag is introduced by wifi, and therefore if it would be a worthwhile investment to pick up a LAN adapter for my Wii U in order to improve the experience.

So I did a little bit of testing, and I got some surprising results.

Before I get into the data, I would like to state that if anyone can find any fault in my testing methodology, or knows a more accurate way of testing, I would be pleased to hear it, so that we can get the most accurate results possible here.
Next, I would like others to try these tests as well, to see if the results are fairly consistent among different people.
Notably, if anyone out there already has a LAN adapter, I would like to see results both over the adapter and over wifi.

First, the site I used for testing latency was: http://i.dslr.net/iphone_speedtest.html
I chose this because it not only works on lower-end devices like the 3ds, but it gives 10 results for latency each time you run it, which helps to see trends and outliers.

To run the test, I simply loaded up the website and pressed the wifi button (the only difference between the buttons is for the purpose of that site's own statistics, it does not affect the test to the best of my knowledge)
If you run it on 3ds, it will hit an error when trying to download, but that's ok because it will still get the latency data before that happens.

For my testing, I had all wifi devices placed between 2-3 feet away from my router, I ran the tests while nothing else was using bandwidth, and I ran 1 test on each device, 3 separate times (i tested at slightly different times during the day to make sure that network issues were not influencing the results)

And so, here are the results that I found across multiple devices in my home:

PC (wired connection):
Test 1: 60ms, 66ms, 67ms, 66ms, 65ms, 66ms, 67ms, 66ms, 66ms, 66ms
Test 2: 132ms, 65ms, 66ms, 66ms, 66ms, 66ms, 66ms, 66ms, 66ms, 67ms
Test 3: 71ms, 63ms, 66ms, 63ms, 66ms, 65ms, 68ms, 64ms, 67ms, 66ms

Wii U (wifi):
Test 1: 80ms, 64ms, 64ms, 64ms, 63ms, 67ms, 63ms, 64ms, 64ms, 65ms
Test 2: 145ms, 63ms, 65ms, 65ms, 64ms, 64ms, 63ms, 64ms, 64ms, 65ms
Test 3: 138ms, 65ms, 64ms, 67ms, 63ms, 64ms, 65ms, 62ms, 64ms, 64ms

3DS (wifi, power saving feature turned off):
Test 1: 211ms, 158ms, 193ms, 173ms, 162ms, 167ms, 166ms, 185ms, 163ms, 158ms
Test 2: 205ms, 160ms, 187ms, 179ms, 160ms, 166ms, 166ms, 186ms, 180ms, 166ms
Test 3: 212ms, 164ms, 185ms, 166ms, 159ms, 167ms, 160ms, 186ms, 179ms, 160ms

Android Phone (wifi):
Test 1: 1165ms, 97ms, 101ms, 101ms, 105ms, 96ms, 103ms, 100ms, 66ms, 67ms
Test 2: 1275ms, 101ms, 102ms, 101ms, 102ms, 101ms, 101ms, 99ms, 107ms, 101ms
Test 3: 251ms, 103ms, 102ms, 102ms, 99ms, 102ms, 100ms, 102ms, 101ms, 104ms


Conclusion:
The really interesting thing here, is that the Wii U wi-fi results are on par with the wired connection on my PC. There is really no noticeable difference here, which I find amazing! If this is true, then there may be no need for most people to get a LAN adapter in hopes of getting a better connection.
The other thing to take away, is that the 3ds wifi performance was terrible. There is about a 100ms difference between the 3ds and wii u results, which would mean lag of around 6 frames! It is certainly possible that the low end hardware of the 3ds could be adversely affecting the results though, and you wont really see that much lag in actual gameplay.

Now, I really want to see what sort of results other people get, to see if my own results are typical, or if they are an outlier.

 

[Mwa1]

From my laptop (wifi) I'm getting this :

test 1: 173ms 164ms 164ms 163ms 166ms 166m 164ms 173ms 165ms 167ms
test 2: 353ms 162ms 159ms 158ms 158ms 165ms 169ms 162ms 158ms 155ms


From the Wii U :

test 1: 166ms 151ms 663ms 149ms 150ms 151ms 156ms 154ms 152ms 156ms - (2257 kbps)
test 2: 312ms 142ms 146ms 145ms 146ms 145ms 146ms 147ms 146ms 160ms - (2265 kbps)
test 3: 309ms 144ms 146ms 237ms 152ms 144ms 144ms 144ms 143ms 142ms - (1772 kbps)


I guess my connection sucks, does this mean I'm f*cked for lagless matches ? (note that I never had ANY kind of lag while playing MK8 online)

 

[Zarxrax]

I didn't really make it clear in my post I guess, but the pure amount of latency doesn't really matter. What needs to be compared is the difference between a wireless and a wired connection.
This test is just a measure of how long it takes to communicate between you and a server somewhere. So your total latency will vary depending on if you live close to that server and have a good network connection to it, or if you live halfway around the world from it. The latency you get over a wired connection serves as your baseline measure. It doesn't matter if its 50ms or 500ms. The difference between that and the results you get over a wireless device will ideally be showing you the amount of latency caused specifically by that wireless connection.