Going to 50 meg from 12 meg download. Really faster?

Pghpooh

Senior member
Jan 9, 2000
791
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Dumb question.
My son in law is using the Comcast internet service. As part of the service he has telephone service.
He uses 2 laptops, a play station, and sometimes WII. All are connected via wifi. Using the 2 laptops he says downloads are slow.
I think the current download speed is 12 meg down and 2 meg up.
Son in law just signed up for the 50 meg down saying the download speeds will jump!!!
I think Comcast is supposed to replace the modem.
Nothing else will change. He has a Linksys wrt160n. The laptops are NOT “N” download capable.
Just by changing the Comcast side I say the download speeds might be a little faster. Not the so called blazing fast Comcast told the son in law. I feel the router and the “G” band wifi in the laptops is the “weak links” and son in law will not get the so called download speeds.
I know this is drawn out…
Your thoughts?
 

Jimmah

Golden Member
Mar 18, 2005
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Maybe a slight increase, G is going to be a limiter for sure. Wired should see an increase from decent sources, overall it sounds like a waste of money.
 

nusyo

Member
Feb 27, 2011
106
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12Mbps is 1.5MB which is enough for most people unless he is watching several HD videos/movies on both laptops, at the same time?
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,570
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I have 30/25 FIOS service, and it's nice, Windows Updates do go a bit faster, but overall, it's not really screaming fast compared to my old 3Mbit DSL service. Web browsing is about the same, although some threads with lots of pictures (cases and cooling threads with picture build logs) do pop up nearly instantly on FIOS, whereas the pictures would wait to load on DSL.

I don't do bittorrent, so I can't comment there.

If you felt that your internet was slow, and you do bittorrent, then perhaps your router is underpowered, not that you have too slow an internet connection.

I know a house with like 7 computers, that shares a comcast 12 or 16 Mbit connection, and I asked the owner of the house if he would like to move to 50Mbit, and he said no way.

Edit: 'G' is 54Mbit/sec MAX, but remember that wireless is half-duplex, and the maximum actual throughput is going to be around half of the connection speed. So you're looking at being limited to around 25Mbit/sec downloads at most. So the 50Mbit/sec is going to be wasted, unless you buy a bunch of USB Wifi N 300 dongles, you can get them on sale for as little as $10. That's what I would do, you probably could use all 50Mbit/sec of your internet connection that way.
 
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JackMDS

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 25, 1999
29,516
408
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I have 30Mb/sec. Download start at that speed and after few second go down to 12-15 Mb/sec.

The reality is that Most busy servers throttle the bandwidth down, they can not allow few End-Users with higher Bandwidth to "Steal" the server.

However since Internet "Speed" play an important roll in our "societal shticks", it very Macho that One can say "Hey man I have a 50Mb/sec connection" :hmm:, even if functionally it is Not necessarily a big deal.



:cool:
 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
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The wireless is what is making it slow. In a perfect world 802.11g can achieve 22 Mbs. That's just with a single client, absolute best case scenario. 10 Mbs is more normal and can go down from there depending on noise and use. Wireless is just slow.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,570
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The wireless is what is making it slow. In a perfect world 802.11g can achieve 22 Mbs. That's just with a single client, absolute best case scenario. 10 Mbs is more normal and can go down from there depending on noise and use. Wireless is just slow.

Hey Spidey, is wireless different depending on whether you are uploading or downloading? Or is that due to some anomoly in router firmware?

I've got a pair of Netgear 834Bv2 N 300 routers, running DD-WRT. They are in WDS mode. The primary WDS router is slaved to my FIOS ActionTec router, and the secondary WDS router, is connected to a gigabit switch and my LAN, with a couple of desktops with gigabit cards.

It works fine, for the most part, but when I do a speedtest from speedtest.net, my wired HTPC, connected to a wired port on the primary WDS router, gets 30/25 usually.

But lately, my desktop machines connected behind the WDS, get 30/7. I don't get why they can still get full download speeds, but the upload is so constricted.

I don't understand what's going on there. Surely, if it was wireless interference, it would affect the download speeds too, wouldn't it?

I also get a ping of around 80-90ms from behind the WDS, and the wired HTPC gets around 22ms.

I just did a speedtest from my friend's house, on Comcast, and he gets 8ms ping to speedtest.net, but then again, it says that the server is also hosted by comcast.

The only reason that I bring this up is, I have MagicJack, and it ran just fine for a couple of years on 3.0/.768 DSL, and now that I have FIOS I had to re-do my network, and now the desktop machine hosting the MagicJack is on wireless. Some people complain that they cannot hear me, and that it is dropping out. Calling back usually fixes the problem, but then it can happen again. (Perhaps MagicJack is now oversold, and their proxy servers are overloaded? I have another friend with MagicJack, and I don't have that problem when I call him (from my cell), so I don't think the problem is universally MagicJack either.) But surely, if my UL is 7Mbit, that should be more than enough for MJ still.
 
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spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
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Doesn't matter direction, it's half duplex. The WDS thrown into the mix could be the reason as there really is no standard for it.

HOWEVER, the radios in the AP are normally better/stronger than the radios in the client which can cause the client to retransmit to the AP at layer1 but it receives just fine.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Doesn't matter direction, it's half duplex.
That's what I understood too.
The WDS thrown into the mix could be the reason as there really is no standard for it.

HOWEVER, the radios in the AP are normally better/stronger than the radios in the client which can cause the client to retransmit to the AP at layer1 but it receives just fine.

But this is two identical APs, talking to each other. That's why I don't quite understand it.

I actually get better performance (UL), with a laptop talking wireless to one of the APs. My laptop gets around 22/16. So the download isn't as good, but the UL is better.

The laptop always seems to connect at 65Mbit/sec, but the APs list the connection speed at 130Mbit/sec, although I've seen them drop as low as 18Mbit at times too.

Edit: I just tried downloading an ISO from my web-accessable NAS, and I was getting as high as 1.8MB/sec at times, via my friend's comcast connection, connecting over the internet to my FIOS, and over the WDS link to my NAS, that is on my LAN.
 
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Pghpooh

Senior member
Jan 9, 2000
791
1
81
HI
A little catch up on my post.
Son in laws internet use is music downloads and the play station via wifi.
I am going to try to convince him to run cat 5 or 6 from the router to the play station. That will take some of the load off of the ifi side of the router.
If I had my way :) ,,,,,, I would replace the router with a newer one possibly a dual band unit. Run cat 5 or 6 for the play station. The new router will be for future growth as I think their older laptop is about to crap out and I would suggest a newer laptop with n band capabilities or dual band capable. They also have a wifi printer and I would disable the wifi part and make it a network printer.
Thanks
 
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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Yes, wired is nearly always preferable to wireless. Wireless is unreliable and slow, and that's on a good day.
 

Cable God

Diamond Member
Jun 25, 2000
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I have Docsis 3.0 50/5 service from another provider after ditching their 20/2 and saw a drastic speed increase across my wired and wireless clients. I share it via an Airport Extreme. Well worth the upgrade to me.
 

JackMDS

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 25, 1999
29,516
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. They also have a wifi printer and I would disable the wifi part and make it a network printer.
Thanks

When a printer's WIFI is connect directly to a Router it is acting as a Network Printer.

.
 

Tsavo

Platinum Member
Sep 29, 2009
2,645
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Yes, wired is nearly always preferable to wireless. Wireless is unreliable and slow, and that's on a good day.

Just shop around for an unrelaible and slow ISP and you'd never notice bad wifi performance.
 

nusyo

Member
Feb 27, 2011
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i have the same comast 12Mb connection which feeds .... lets see: 5 desktops, 4 laptops, 2 network printers on a linksys wrt54G (running DD-WRT) with no problems (not counting the iphones, ip cameras and picture frame which all use wifi)
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
23,956
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My wireless in the best case scenario can hit around 22.5 Mbps on the internet speed test on 802.11g. I managed to hit maybe 23.5 on the internet speed test on 802.11n, which makes sense since my internet service is 25 Mbps. (I can hit 25.2 on wired ethernet.)

It feels a little bit better for surfing than my old 3 Mbps service, but really not by much. For surfing, 3 Mbps is totally fine. It should be better for Netflix though. (I haven't subscribed to Netflix yet.)

Where it made a huge difference was downloads of course. My last OS X update came in lightning fast. More importantly for me though is the upload speed. I now have 7 Mbps upload, and that's totally awesome.

I'd take something like 12 down / 7 up over 25 down / 1 up any day. The good news though is I have 25 down / 7 up.
 

omega329

Junior Member
Mar 6, 2011
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i have the same comast 12Mb connection which feeds .... lets see: 5 desktops, 4 laptops, 2 network printers on a linksys wrt54G (running DD-WRT) with no problems (not counting the iphones, ip cameras and picture frame which all use wifi)


This, I think your son may be downloading more than he claims.
I have the standard comcast internet. There are 6 computers in the house, 1 of my own has youtube playing 24/7, my sister often web chats 24/7, and I can still jump on xbox and play with out lag. I also ocassionaly download torrents, and only when my download is greater than > 4mbs or if my upload is more than 250kbs do I experience any lag while playing FPS games that are very sensitive to ping fluctuations.

Your son may be "torrenting" witch can require some high upload bandwith, which can significantly slow the internet down. Also the ISP is more than likely bottlenecking his connection.

Another scenario is the possibility of viruses, botnets, and other malicious programs on his computer could be bogging down his connection.

If none of this applies invest in a Linksys router or other that have features such as QoS which allow you to set priority of devices on the network.

To sum it up, there will be not benefit of moving to a 50mb line in my opinion, given the circumstances of only using 2 computers and both being on wireless.
 
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