A friend of mine has his sympatico modem hooked up to a 100ft phone cord so he can run it around his basement to a dlink router I had. We have serious lag issues when both our computers are running just wow, our latency's run at between 300 and 450 average is 384 to be exact. but goes up or down depending on location in game. Anyways, when I installed my similar router at home, the box suggested using the 6ft cable that came with it and not going any further than that away from the wall with the modem. It's a bit of work if this is the reason for our lag issues to change the cables as I assume i'd have to rerun some cat5 around the basement so that the router was the one far away from the source. and the modem was close to the wall. So my question after that novel is...will moving the modem closer to the wall make a difference? 10/100 network, no gigabit :( ty for reply's Craash ;)

If the phone cord is one of the plain flat cords it is most likely your problem on a run that long . You do need cat 5 line cord or regular cat 5 cable with a decent end put on it .

I agree. Cheap and/or long phone cables from the wall socket to the modem is often the source of bad DSL communications. Stuart

Actually guys, there's no restrictions on the length of phone cord length like there is on network cables. I wouldn't say you "need" Cat5 cable as the wires inside are identical to the ones in a phone cable. But, if you have some cat5 and RJ-11's you may want to try that. Although I'll warn you, you'll likely need to get RJ-11 "keystone" type ends instead of the little clear plastic ones. The "keystone" type ends are the ones you would use in a faceplate on an outlet. The reason I recommend those is that you'll have problems punching an RJ-11 clear plastic end on a Cat5 cable. I work with phones as well as the network (I'm in the Telecom & Network dept) and trust me, we have many phone cables a whole lot longer than 100 feet and we've never had issues with them. We even have one that's running a DSL connection in another departments lab and it has no issues with connectivity. The problem most likely is that the two of you are playing WoW at the same time. Just to test and see, how about only one of you gaming and the other one wait and watch. Does the ping time improve? If it does, that's the problem. I know from online gaming myself, if my wife logs on and starts downloading files or streaming video while I'm playing, my ping time goes to pot and I have to stop until she's done. I'm not familiar with WoW and can't say for sure that's the problem as it may not use a whole lot of bandwidth. If it does, then that is more likely your problem than the cable. If it doesn't improve, then I suggest you either put new RJ-11 ends on the cable, or buy a new cable. It is possible there's a physical problem with either the cables or ends. Oh and just for the record, Ping is not latency, those are two different issues. Although somewhat related, you can have an excellent ping and high latency, or vice versa.