max speed for wireless G?

[themillak]

It wasn't until my wife and I got married that we finally needed to get our own internet and wireless router. In Israel 2 years ago they seemed to just finally be getting used to the idea of having wireless at home and so they offered to rent to us some generic wireless router for ~$2.5 a month. Instead we went to some local computer store and bought their cheapest wireless G router for ~$20. wbr-3406tx (my wife wasn't sold on the idea of getting a nice one, but i was able to convince her that after a year we'd come out ahead).

Now that we're 2 years later I'm somewhat regularly sharing tv shows/movies between our two laptops and i'm really not impressed with the speeds. In our old apartment we were both at the dining room table and the router was 5-10 feet away. max speed? 1.2 MB/s, about 2 if I plugged in my laptop first. Now at our new place the router is on the other side of the apartment and I'm showing a connection speed of 36-48 Mb/s and i'm getting about 800 KB/s max.

am I wrong in thinking I should be getting faster transfer speeds? would I need to splurge for wireless N and some gigabit ethernet ports for our old desktop/server?

I'm aware max for G is 54 Mb/s, I don't know really how that translates into actual transfer rates I would see though.

 

[hennessy1]

Under perfect conditions I believe it is about 2.2megabytes per second.

 

[JackMDS]

I do not know what is available on the market in IL

In general, this is as good as it gets in the sub $100 category.

Everything else is matter of the environment.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833162033

"Speed" (Bandwidth) expectation of Ethernet Home Networks using Windows.

http://www.ezlan.net/net_speed.html

 

[bobdole369]

Your slower speed now, might be the result of interference, either from some device in your home, or perhaps the channel is congested where you are (mayhaps some person is using the hell out of their wireless-G or B or N device). You can try changing the channel - Channel 6 (in the USA, I think the channels are pretty much the same, some places have more channels) - is by far the most congested. Channels 1 and 11 not so much.

2.2MB/s is 22 megabits, darn tootin' for G. It's about as good as it gets with WPA enabled. Recall that 54megabits is the "data rate", half the rate when you encrypt it - allow for retransmissions (there are ALWAYS retransmissions) and you get about what you originally got.

Add a few walls in the way between your laptop and the AP and your throughput drops to 800k - (8 megabits). That is respectable, and again - given conditions - about as good as it gets with a few walls between. N would give you a little more throughput but don't expect miracles. 5.4ghz (A) would give you a little less congestion (less people on it), but more signal loss through walls, so it might not help at all.

The ultimate fix - eliminate the walls. Move the WAP so that there are less obstructions, and you'll likely find the speed goes up.

 

[Eug]

2.2MB/s is 22 megabits

2.2 MB/s is < 18 Mbps.

However I can get about 23 Mbps (~2.9 MB/s) over 802.11g, but that requires optimal conditions - no interference, and access point located in same room.

Normally I get more like 1 - 2 MB/s.

 

[themillak]

did a quick look at the different wireless networks that my laptop picks up quickly. 11 networks, all of them wireless g, 5 on channel 11, 5 on channel 6, one on channel 4. in israel the channels go up to 13 but my laptop won't recognize above 11. i don't know what the guy on 4 is doing, but i'll switch mine down to channel 1 later today when I have some more time to play around with it.

i was previously looking at the 54Mb and thinking i should be getting around 5.4MB/s.

as for whats available in israel, we end up having some stuff but lacking a large pool of options, and for electronics its about double the price, mostly from taxes. we normally buy stuff in the states and then bring it back, and for electronics make sure it can take 220v.

 

[Rifter]

the most i get from my cheap WRT54G running tomato is 2.4MB/s.

 

[bobdole369]

did a quick look at the different wireless networks that my laptop picks up quickly. 11 networks, all of them wireless g, 5 on channel 11, 5 on channel 6, one on channel 4. in israel the channels go up to 13 but my laptop won't recognize above 11. i don't know what the guy on 4 is doing, but i'll switch mine down to channel 1 later today when I have some more time to play around with it.

i was previously looking at the 54Mb and thinking i should be getting around 5.4MB/s.

as for whats available in israel, we end up having some stuff but lacking a large pool of options, and for electronics its about double the price, mostly from taxes. we normally buy stuff in the states and then bring it back, and for electronics make sure it can take 220v.

Of course Eug is right - 54mbps doesn't = 5.4MB per second, but I don't recall the equation right now.

 

[Eug]

54 Mbps is max theoretical, including overhead, not the speed you'd actually get. So, even if you're connecting at 54 Mbps, don't expect to get anywhere near that in actual transfers.

Real world max for 802.11g is in the ballpark of about 24 Mbps. I can get about 23 Mbps under perfect conditions, but usually it's below 20 Mbps in my setup.

IOW, if you can get over 2 MB/s in real-world conditions at a distance, then you're probably doing OK. If you're only getting 1.2 MB/s from 10 feet away then that's not so good.

 

[bobdole369]

54 Mbps is max theoretical, including overhead, not the speed you'd actually get. So, even if you're connecting at 54 Mbps, don't expect to get anywhere near that in actual transfers.

Real world max for 802.11g is in the ballpark of about 24 Mbps. I can get about 23 Mbps under perfect conditions, but usually it's below 20 Mbps in my setup.

IOW, if you can get over 2 MB/s in real-world conditions at a distance, then you're probably doing OK. If you're only getting 1.2 MB/s from 10 feet away then that's not so good.

Those figures are for "encrypted" 54g yes? As I've seen 45mbps+ with no encryption, but thats a damn folly.

 

[spidey07]

Those figures are for "encrypted" 54g yes? As I've seen 45mbps+ with no encryption, but thats a damn folly.

No. That's maximum amount of throughput the band will get. If you got higher then it was because the AP/client were doing multiple radios (MIMO) or 802.11n. Encryption is done in hardware and has no impact on throughput/performance.

 

[alkemyst]

It's 54Mbps, but you operate at half duplex so in reality the best is 27Mbps.

it's megabits in wireless bandwidth not bytes.

You have encryption, wireless overhead, etc to deal with. Working through my CCNA wireless now

There is 'afterburner' technologies that push this to 100MBps+...so that's the only time you'd see close to 54Mbps in real world.

 

[ScottMac]

54 Mbps is max theoretical, including overhead, not the speed you'd actually get. So, even if you're connecting at 54 Mbps, don't expect to get anywhere near that in actual transfers.

Real world max for 802.11g is in the ballpark of about 24 Mbps. I can get about 23 Mbps under perfect conditions, but usually it's below 20 Mbps in my setup.

IOW, if you can get over 2 MB/s in real-world conditions at a distance, then you're probably doing OK. If you're only getting 1.2 MB/s from 10 feet away then that's not so good.

54 Mbps is the signaling rate. For reliability, the data is duplicated so that the actual max throughput of discrete information is ~22Mbps (because there is also some overhead of the various protocols carried on that signal).

That's under perfect conditions, no interference, one active host on the AP, no 802.11b clients in sight. That's shared bandwidth, so divide it by the number of clearly visible clients, reduce it additionally for everyone if one or more are slow or impeded.

 

[GregGreen]

Just wanted to add something I didn't notice anyone else add: when thinking about your bandwidth, you need to remember that the data is being sent from your laptop to the router to your wife's laptop if you are transferring data between the two computers. So when thinking in your head, you can automatically divide that theoretical maximum of 54mbps in half. So each computer has 27mbps to theoretically work with. Add in overhead and interference and signaling issues and that 1.2MB/s isn't a terrible figure (roughly 10mbps if you aren't good with the conversion math). The 800KB/s figure isn't as good, but it's not terribly surprising.

There's two things you need to remember:
1. Wireless signal strength (and consequently, available speeeeeed) drop off quickly as you move farther away from the router (and is made worse by both clients being farther away).
2. With networking, you often get what you pay for. Half of these routers you can buy today can't do anywhere close to what their wired ports are rated for and the same is true for wireless performance. You might be able to eek out more performance if you had a router that cost more than $20 two years ago. You might not, but you might.

Also, the power each router is allowed to pump out is different for every country. I don't know what Israel's rules are on this. If it's a low number, you will get worse performance.

Hope this was helpful.