hi,
have a voyager 9091-a4 wireless router downstairs and quake often lags despite it showing a good ping and a strong signal strength.
Any optimisations, tweaks or recommendations? unfortunately not possible to run a cable or install another socket in this house.
...lags to where?
Are you taking LAN games, or internet games?
If it's a LAN game, then make sure that the individual computers aren't doing anything that affects their network connection speeds -- for example, make sure there aren't any bandwidth-hogging applications like P2P clients running in the background.
You can also see if there are updated version of your network card drivers available, they may contain additional optimizations.
Lastly, keep in mind that wireless connections are subject to much more external interference than wired connections... For example, if you use your microwave, it may put your wireless LAN reliability in the toilet for that time, since it interferes with your wireless signal. (My 2.4GHz phone sounds horrible while using the microwave, for example)
Related to that: Many other wireless devices use the same frequencies as Wi-Fi routers, and can lead to interference: Wireless phones, RF remote controls, wireless headsets, wireless mice, wireless keyboards, garage door openers, wireless remote light switches, and *much* more. Since the 2.4 GHz frequency is unlicensed, anyone can broadcast pretty much whatever they want on there. Convenient for you since it allows you to operate your wi-fi-router without a license, but so can anyone else.
Even if YOU don't have interfering wireless devices, there's a good chance that your neighbors do... So that could mean that your wi-fi connection is less reliable when your neighbor is on the phone, or cooking a microwave dinner.
If it's internet based, there are a lot of other external factors such as latency and usage on any router in between your computer, the game server, and the connections to all other participants....
If you are on a cable modem (rather than DSL), you're also sharing your bandwidth with the rest of your neighborhood (thanks to the shared ring-topology)... whcih means that a couple of kids down the block swapping movies, it will affect your connection's throughput speeds, responsiveness and latency.
If LAN is good but internet is not, you know that the cause for the problem is outside of your house, and therefore outside of your direct control as well....
I'm assuming you have a 54Mbps wireless setup....
You can try changing the wi-fi channel your router uses - normally defaults to 6 but its pretty much trial and error to find out which one works best for you - mine works best on channel 2.
You can also try setting your router to 802.11g mode - they're usually set to mixed mode by default but if all your wireless adapters are 11g, then there's no point. It'll be more efficient if you set it to 802.11g only.
Does the wireless network speed say 36/48/54Mbps? Or does it top out at 11Mbps? There may be room to tweak the settings of the wireless adapter itself, although its difficult to say without knowing what wireless adapter you have and what settings are available for you to change.
it fluctuates with a green bar, sometimes 24bps, sometimes 36, etc...
There is a taskbar app but that seems only to show diagnostic info.