Can long LAN cable cause input lag while gaming?

[yuqisong]

I've ordered 40 meters ethernet cable online 'cause our router is in the living room and I need to play at my room. Is 40m cable too long? would I experience some network issue while gaming like higher ping or pocket loss?

[Lurick]

No, the limit is 100m, below that there is no difference that's noticeable.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

Answer 1: Yes, the longer a cable is the longer the signal has to travel and this will in fact increase your latency.

Answer 2: Absolutely not, an electromagnetic signal through a medium travels between 50-99% of the speed of light (In a vacuum).  It's calculated to be about 65% in CAT5E.  So that 300 000 000 meters per second will be closer to 195 000 meters per second.  So your 1 meter cable will have a signal latency of about 0.005128 milliseconds.  If we increase that to 10 meters, now your latency is increased to half a 0.05128 milliseconds.  We've added a whopping 0.0461 milliseconds of network latency.  ...This is vastly beyond any realm of perception that the mass of thinking meat you call a 'brain' within your skull could ever appreciate.

 

(I def did some rounding here so don't kill me)

[mariushm]

If you experience anything weird, go in your network card's settings in Device Manager and disable power saving features, green ethernet, low power modes etc

 

For example, in the picture below, you could set to disabled Energy Efficient Ethernet and Green Ethernet - it will only make your ethernet card consume a bit more power, like maybe half a watt more or something like that.

 

Why would you do that?

 

Basically, the maximum length of a cable is 100 meters. You'd need quite a bit of power to push data up to 100 meters so the cards are smart enough to figure out the length of the cable and reduce transmission power if there's no need to push the data at very high power levels to the other end.

 

However, cards assume the network cable is made of pure copper wires, with a known wire resistance ... some of the cheaper cables out there are of the CCA variety, which means Copper Clad Aluminum (or you could say Copper Covered Aluminum) - the wires have a core of aluminum and they're plated with a very thin layer of copper.

 

Such cables have a slightly higher resistance, so the signal can be weakened over longer distances - if a network card transmits using too low power, it could happen for some data packets to have errors at the other end, and then they'll have to be resent so you could get hiccups or jitters (sudden and rare ping increases in games)

 

CCA cables are perfectly fine for patch cables, up to let's say 10-15 meters, but should be avoided for longer lengths like 30-40 meters as you intend to buy.

 

If your cable is regular full copper cable then you won't have anything to worry about.