Recommended Tests

So I recently switched to wireless and it totally sucks for gaming. I did this because it was just too noisy downstairs for me to focus on my studies (where my modem and router are located).
Now I get these stupid random spikes when gaming, and it usually gets me killed every time haha.
My router is a WRT160N, and I'm using a Belkin USB Wireless N Adapter. I picked the one with the cord, so I could move it around for the best signal possible. I'm on Cox's 15/2 plan, and my speeds are just fine.
I did some research on it already, and people say it's due to WLAN Autoconfig service searcing for networks every 60 seconds, but I have ruled that out because my spikes are completely random and not at 60 second intervals. Also, they happen ONLY when gaming. If I were to ping 192.168.1.1 -t or something just browsing the web, I would see no spikes at all. I would run a cable, but it's just too hard to this cause because I'd have to run it upstairs and then all the way across to the opposite side of the house. I hired an electrician to come have a look, and he said he'd have to charge about $400 dollars. No way my parents or myself would pay for that because that is completely unreasonable.
Is there anything I can do to get this wireless gaming to work? I was thinking of buying a wireless repeater. Any opinions on this? Thanks in advance.

What the hell! You're a genius dude. I've never considered static because I didn't think it would help, but low and behold no more spikes! Please enlighten me on why this makes my internet so much more faster and stable? I'm still connecting to the same connection, and am still doing it wirelessly! I don't know what QoS is, so what is that? I don't even really need it anymore, but I wanna squeeze as much performance out of this as possible. Now I can still connect to my router without SSID broadcast, so I turned that off to make sure my neighbors can't get in! Even better than setting a password (I heard encryption sucks out some speed). Thanks mudmanc4!

First thing first, really, I once thought I was a genius, but then I realized that I'm not, get it ? I'm just big on making sure the data that the machine requests, goes to that machine, not sending a request, and letting the hardware decide where it goes by piecing parts of the packets together then comparing them to where they came from. In a nut shell thats what a static does, a very light explanation.

 The QOS will help, when someone else is using the line, it takes up part of your bandwidth right ? So by setting "Quality of Service" , the bandwidth that is set for the static will all be allocated to that IP.

 Lets say for example you have a 10Mb connection, ( just examples ) and the gaming machine needs 7Mb of that, but there's someone else on there that is trying to use 5 Mb, what QOS will do, (depending on how you have it set up and what the firmware the router /switch whatever is capable of ) QOS will make sure that the static machine with the QOS settings set to allow all available bandwidth to that IP.

 All it will do to the other machines, if you have it set up right, will slow there speed down, because it's been allocated to the IP you punched in.
 

 There's alot more to it, if you want, and different devices have different capabilities, I'll check out what firmware your router has. You might be able to install a different firmware such as dd-wrt, or tomato, and there's a couple others that arent mainstream that works super well if you want to get a bit more advanced. Which will allow deeper configurations. Or, you could telnet into that router you have, and get real deep into setting a vlan and get rid of netbios for even more security and reliability. Netbios stinks on ice and cloggs up the local network pretty bad by constantly looking for other devices, keeping them in cache, blah blah sending data that should not be sent and sometimes creating security risks. Alright, I'll stop there.

Mudman, got any good QOS stuff for Tomato firmware routers? Comcast is very picky with QOS stuff in Tomato. I think it has to do with them doing the traffic shaping on their end. I could never get any type of QOS to work with my Comcast connection.

I agree completely, I have no idea why they care about what I do with my bandwidth. I'll have to check and make sure anything to do with remote management is disabled in my routers settings. Yes, the router is capable of setting mac filtering, and it also supports QOS based on mac addresses too. I've looked at QOS stuff on the web for quite some time. The best QOS stuff I could find for Comcast, and Tomato come from http://gazguzla.com/optimize-tomato-qos/. If anyone has any better QOS stuff for Comcast, please share. 

The game has like 100 different servers so I can't trace it. How am I supposed to set up QoS? I jsut did it through gpedit.msc. is there a better way to do it? Anything else I can try?

I basically did this for QoS: http://www.astahost.com/info.php/Speed-Connection-Windows-Xp_t3099.html.
I don't see anything that says QoS, but here are my wireless settings:
http://i37.tinypic.com/s6sj89.png. Also I'm wondering as to why this is: http://i36.tinypic.com/34of2qh.png. In the web gui it says the connection is automatic configuration. Did I mess up setting up the static connection? I would try the other firmwares like dd-wrt or something, but that one specifically doesn't support my router: WRT160N v3.

EDIT: Ahh it was under apps/gaming: http://i38.tinypic.com/2ai101k.png
EDIT2: How does this look? http://i33.tinypic.com/20z3a8h.png

check my edit bro! 3 ports are in order: game server, login server, chat server. Game server I would think would be the most important one, but I did the other two just to be safe.