• Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Oct 26, 2017
20,440
This is a very stupid question but I was just wondering this as my apartment setup is inconvenient and thus I need to pull my ethernet cord 20 feet across the room whenever I want to play Smash online or Mario Maker versus. I was just thinking about how reliable wireless controllers are compared to wifi and I was wondering if any device could be made that essentially acts like this.

1. Plug device into an ethernet out on the router
2. Takes data transmitted by other player(s)
3. Translates data received by other player(s) into simple inputs like from a wireless controller.
4. Transmits this transformed data to the game console over Bluetooth.

Would the delay be too much or would a device like this be too expensive? Or is there another reason why something like this can't be done and why playing a fighting game over wifi is so bad, but playing a fighting game with a wireless controller is fine? Sorry for the very weird, very specific, and very dumb question.
 

AnimeJesus

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,171
The amount of info your wireless controller sends to your console several feet away isnt comparable to the amount and variability of data being transmitted over wifi.
 

Absoludacrous

One Winged Slayer
The Fallen
Oct 26, 2017
3,182
Transfer rate on bluetooth is much, much lower than Wifi. Your premise was backwards from the start.
 

low-G

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,144
Even over the entirety of the Internet, ensuring perfect data transmission increases latency.

Fast
Reliable

Pick one.
 

pswii60

Member
Oct 27, 2017
26,667
The Milky Way
Can't you just use Powerline or something?

I only see another 2-3ms of latency going from Ethernet to WiFi. Far less than a frame.
 

Deleted member 48434

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 8, 2018
5,230
Sydney
OP, I told you yesterday that bluetooths data throughput is shit, so the premise is flawed.
Theoretically, maybe a 60ghz transmitter and receiver could work (Like the vives wireless transmitter)... If intel sold one that could work in this way.
I don't think they do though.
And I imagine there's probably issues with it I don't know of.

Use an Ethernet/Cat cable.
Cable management is an art.
if you are skilled nobody will notice the cable.

Can't you just use Powerline or something?

I only see another 2-3ms of latency going from Ethernet to WiFi. Far less than a frame.
I hear powerline is really unreliable, depending on your house wiring.
 
Last edited:

slothrop

â–˛ Legend â–˛
Member
Aug 28, 2019
3,876
USA
Wifi is the best protocol for what it does.

You could infact stream data over controller inputs. I think I saw some Pokemon red hack that emulated twitch chat via controller inputs. But the bandwidth would be absolutely terrible and it's nothing but a toy. Any way you can imagine accomplishing this would be far slower than wifi
 

Transistor

Vodka martini, dirty, with Tito's please
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
37,127
Washington, D.C.
The Switch just has shitty wifi. Hell, you'd more than likely be better with a powerline adapter or a wireless bridge (do they even still make wireless bridges? Damn I'm old)
 

Alex3190

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,127
Ugh. At first I thought this was about wlan controllers being used for gaming which confused the hell out of me.

Powerline would be much better than wifi if your apartments wiring is decent.
 
Last edited:

EloKa

GSP
Verified
Oct 25, 2017
1,905
"Wireless" is just short for the WLAN technology (Wireless Lan Area Network) and "WiFi" is just a US brand name for a specific WLAN variation. Both terms describe basically the same thing. What you call "wireless controller" are actually bluetooth controllers tho.

Bluetooth is nice if you have exactly 1 device that wants to connect to exactly 1 other device in a close range. Quick set up, low bandwith and range, unreliable and just a single connection. WLAN is the other way around: takes longer to set up, higher bandwith, more stable and allows many parallel connections.

Your controller feels more reliable because that's just your console + controller that talk to each over a tiny distance while WiFi can basically include the whole world.