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Speed Difference (Real Life) Wired vs Wireless

M

Mr Bob

Golden Member
My connection (ISP) is rated at about 20Mbps down, and 5Mbps up - tested online.

Assume I have a wireless G (theoretical max of 54 Mbps) or wireless N (300 Mbps), running a basic home wireless router.

If I'm downloading/uploading files from the internet, am I going to notice a difference in speed going from wired to wireless? If so, what's the logic behind it?

I've read up a little bit, and it looks like it's faster overall to have some wired and some wireless. Since there is X amount of bandwidth available on the wireless, and Y amount available on the wired.

What do you guys think? Unless my ISP is giving me more than 30-40Mbps, I'll never see a difference going with wired vs wireless, right? Assuming I'm not dealing with in-network transfers, and stick strictly to the internet.
 
You're not going to max out your internet connection with G which has max thruput of 22Mbs in a perfect world with zero other 2.4Ghz sources. N could probably max it out, depending on environment.

That being said, wired is always faster. There are other things with wireless that slow it down that just aren't in play with wired. There's really no advantage to having some wired and some wireless, the bottleneck is always the slowest component which in this case would be 802.11g.
 
At some point, though, the slower your internet connection is, the closer wireless speeds will be to wired speeds.

So my question is kind of like trying to figure out what that relationship is. Do you have any idea? I though the max of G was 54, not 22? Even at 22, wouldn't my 20 Mbps connection still be maxed out?
 
latency and packet loss and the o/s used (xp is the worst, win7 is much better, *nix is far far better these days).


latency is something wired will always have an advantage. think about SSD versus harddrive. latency is a nightmare as it has huge domino effects.

encryption adds latency and authentication - what a nightmare.
 
My old router would crash with a torrent over wireless for more than a day or two, and that was with throttled internet access too. 😛 The same router would be rock solid on wired.
 
People should note what is "fast and stable" to some is not to others. For example because I cheated and used channel 14 in the US to test a connection, the 2.4 ghz connection was pretty rock solid but the latency was still about 35ms wireless while sub 10ms with wired. As latency goes up, overall speed goes down, even if the channel says "11mb/s or 54mb/s" Those speed numbers are often just a guess for the card. Also discards and damaged frames are atypical on wired setups but very common wireless. That being said, when I am lazy I do game on the wireless, and I can definitely tell the "lag" is higher on the wireless. Surfing the web however was normal and I couldn't tell and performance issues. Video on the other hand....
 
It's all about what you use it for... For just surfing the net, you won't notice a difference. Gaming, very minor latency difference. But for things like file sharing (I have a large home network for example) and moving files over the internal network, then ya wired has a huge advantage obviously. It's all just about what you're going to do with it. MOST users won't notice any real world difference wireless. Generally speaking... Unless they do a lot of LAN transfers.
 
SirGCal said:
It's all about what you use it for... For just surfing the net, you won't notice a difference. Gaming, very minor latency difference. But for things like file sharing (I have a large home network for example) and moving files over the internal network, then ya wired has a huge advantage obviously. It's all just about what you're going to do with it. MOST users won't notice any real world difference wireless. Generally speaking... Unless they do a lot of LAN transfers.
Click to expand...

+1

many of my neighbors do not even know that there is a Wire connection option. They get a Laptop. a Wireless Router and they are very happy. :thumbsup:


😎
 
Read my "Finally got FIOS" thread for some speedtests and comparisons between wired and wireless.

I get consistent speed tests of 30Mbit/sec down and 25Mbit/sec up on the wired PC, and I get quite variable results from the wireless laptop, anywhere from also 30down/25up (very rare), to 16down/12up. Which is roughly half speed.

I did get 2.0MB/sec down from Microsoft's download servers the other day downloading an SDK. So that's still pretty good for wireless.
 
Wireless was never meant to be a replacement for wired and will never be. The sole purpose of wireless is mobility, not performance. If you need to move around a lot, then use wireless. If you want performance or if the client doesn't move all over the place then use wired.

This is a fundamental truth in networking. Even today wireless performance is about where wired networks were 15 years ago.
 
... Contemplating running a 50' Cat5e cable between rooms. What a PITA though. I wonder if I could get some self-stick cable guides to attach to the wall near the ceiling, or perhaps I should go with a floor-based cable concealer, with the tube inside for cables.

Or perhaps I should not worry about it, and not cause myself OCD over my FIOS speeds.

Either that, or I could put the fileserver in my bedroom closet, but I don't think that I would like the noise when I sleep. Plus, half of the clients, and my gigabit NAS, would still be in the living room, so there would be a wireless link either way.
 
A good middle-path alternative is networking over your mains electrical cabling with appropriate boxes. They suffer much less from many of the issues that wireless has, and they are zero configuration - you just plug them in and they work as if your whole house is a network hub.

The real pain with wireless access is when it suddenly drops out for 1 second, or 30. If you're playing a game, tough luck, you just died.
 
I have some powerline networking gear, but I don't really have enough available outlets to use them. I only have two dual outlets in my bedroom, and the closest one to my FIOS, is powering the FIOS ONT (installer told me it had to be directly plugged into the AC, and then the other plug is used by my APC 550VA UPS, which then in turn powers my TV, my HTPC, my FIOS HD box, my FIOS router, and my secondary WDS router.
 
You can run them from splitters/extension cables/etc. The manuals tell you to avoid it, but it doesn't result in much drop in performance when I tried it. Wired is of course the ideal way to go, always.
 
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