Filesharing slow on wireless lan

[Kibbo86]

Hi all,

Just got back from "fixing" a wlan at a friend's house. They had not been able to connect before, I reset the modem, enabled WEP (one wnic didn't have wpa, didn't want to bother downloading) and had them both connected and browsing. They had gone through the windows home networking "wizard," so I had to delete the bridges from Network Connections to get them online.

Both computers are surfing at decent speeds (>2000kbps on an "up to 3 meg" line) but they are filesharing at less than 1000 kbps. The files are getting through, though. D-link router, one intel card and one SMC PCMCIA card. All 802.11g.

Both computers are a bit of a mess software-wise, a clean-out would do them good, but the difference in speed between the download speed and the file transfer speed makes me think it may be a windows configuration issue.

Any suggestions?

Edit: Both computers and the router were in the same room, I don't think signal strength is the issue.

 

[Goosemaster]

With 802.11 wireless wireless pc to wireless pc transfers are always horrible.

It is in the nature of how Access points work....

 

[Kibbo86]

Huh,

So I just give up?

I don't like that answer. Do you have any sources that could convince me to stop banging my head against the wall? (or at least teach me something).

 

[Goosemaster]

No. There are ways to rememdy this. I am trying to find a resource that explains to you how wireless works so you can understand why it is so slow comapred to wireless to internet or wireless to wired.

For example, from wired to wireless I get about 18Mbps,and from wireless to wireless, I get about 4-6Mbps. basically there is one radio in the Access point built into the device and it is either transmitting or recieving, as are the wireless cards.

I don't know if you remember a type of networking device called a 'hub,' which used to really the first consumer-friendly LAN technology. Wireless is very similar in that you have pcs 'broadcasting' data to the network, to everybody basically, and the one who needs it accept it. The problem arises when you have traffic traveling between clients. Basically client use technology borrowed from cell phones wher they time their transmissions so theyr con't send at the same time to have no one recieve the signal. CDMA, TDMA and thigns like that use multiple channels and timign to pull this off, as does your wireless netowrk.

Basically, with wireless all this goes on behind the scenes, and of course, they have come way since first basing it of cdma so you get ridiculous capacity that still capitulates to the technology. That said, 3G has pulled it off, using crazy algorithms, and now you can at home using MIMO (totally unrelated)

MIM0 or multiple.input.multiple.output. uses various attenas to send and recieve in weird combinations, which equates to faster wireless to wireless speeds. There aren't multiple radios, but rather, signals can receieved and sent more efficiently


look into MIMO routers for better performance. Tom's networking did a review and found the Belkin SuperG routers to be the best. Netwtgear MIMO's where amoung the worst.

basically, sorry for the long post but I am sick and I tend to ramble when ill and full of germs...

basically, if you could improve signal quality via better antennas speeds might pick up, but honestly, that is just a limit of the technology.

realzie that if you get a MIMO router, you have to get MIMO wireless adapters to take advantage of it....



phew...


*passes out*

 

[Kibbo86]

Thanks for the info Goose,

I hope you still have a pulse.