So I bought this new computer mostly to geek out on Warcraft. I had some Bluetooth issues which I eventually gave up on and just purchased a USB headset. My only remaining gripe was the network latency when playing Warcraft. When I was playing on my XP laptop, I had ping times of around 100ms to the game servers. When I was playing on my new Vista machine, they would oscillate wildly from about 500 to over 4000ms. Obviously, when playing a realtime online game like Warcraft, having the game freeze for four seconds (especially during combat) was a huge problem.

I assumed the problem was Warcraft itself, because I didn't notice network weirdness anywhere else, and because traceroutes to the game server showed perfectly acceptable ping times. But after a complete reinstall of the game and removal of all of my interface mods, the problem still persisted. Then, in a fit of desperation, I turned off wireless and ran a wire across my house to the computer. Problem disappears. Using the wired network, latencies below 300ms always, even during heavy network usage. Using the wireless network, latencies around 800ms with spikes up to several seconds multiple times a minute.

Now it's not my wireless network, because it works fine on wireless with the laptop. So it's either the wireless card hardware/firmware that came with the computer from Dell, or Vista's drivers for the wireless card. Is this a known issue?

Is the wireless networking in Vista, by default, doing something like searching for other networks or channel scanning for the best signal path or something that might interfere with my realtime gaming? I get fine bandwidth through the wireless... just weird latency spikes. Any ideas?

In the meantime, I've had to move the computer to a different room, one that has a network jack in it.