Connectivity with World of Warcraft

Listed here are ways of connecting to World of Warcraft, from Best to Worst

Supported Methods

 * Fiber Optic Broadband


 * Fastest speeds. Stability comparable to cable Internet.


 * Cable Broadband


 * Good speed. Many providers cap total bandwidth allowed per month.


 * DSL/ADSL/VDSL


 * Slowest of the broadband types. May be capped (bandwidth).

Unsupported Methods

 * Cellular Broadband (not supported by Blizzard)
 * Cellular (or Wireless) Broadband provided by Verizon, At&t, and others...employing the use of a special modem or tethering of your Cell/Smartphone. Not supported by Blizzard because of the physics/heuristics involved with the way cellular signals handle internet traffic packets. Download/Upload speeds are comparable to DSL, but isn't the greatest for a latency dependant application such as World of Warcraft. Also, In most cases, you have a bandwidth cap of 1gb or 5gb per month that can really bite you in the rear when it comes time to patch the game client.


 * Dial-up (56k Phone lines)
 * Not the most preferrable connection for downloading/uploading, but can still keep somewhat stable pingtimes of around 400ms-600ms. NOTE:  As of patch 4.0 the game is largely unplayable on dial-up due to streaming.


 * Satellite Broadband (yes, it's worse than dial-up for WoW)
 * Because of the distance your information has to travel, and horrible upload speeds, your latency will be around 1000ms at the best times. Bandwidth caps here too.

Networking

 * Ethernet (also known as Hardwired) Networking
 * Using a wired connection through Ethernet (Cat5) is the most stable and preferred method of networking for World of Warcraft


 * Wireless Networking
 * Some users could see higher latency times and more disconnection issues. Not recommended, and little support is given to users by Blizzard employees. For best results, the closer you are to the wireless router/modem, the better. If distance is an issue, purchase a repeater.