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Wireless internet = GARBAGE!

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OneOfTheseDays

Diamond Member
I picked up a 10 buck ethernet router (10/100) today and hooked up me and my brothers computer for fun. Unbelievable speeds, wireless has so much catching up to do in terms of everything (latency, lag, SPEED). THe only thing wireless is good for is sharing internet. For file sharing wired ethernet cannot be beat.
 
Yeah,

Wireless pretty much sucks big donkey balls.

It literally takes us back to 1985 networks. Slow, unreliable and half-duplex.

Let's hope it gets better. Given the amount of money consumers and businesses are pouring into it, the technology will advance at a rapid pace.
 
i mean the practicality of roaming your house and still being able to surf the web is amazing, however the speeds and unreliability of wireless ethernet are just awful at this point. Hopefully things will get better in the future.
 
it is still in its infancy, and its just fine for surfing the net around the house on a laptop. Its also pretty cool that you can go downtown (depending on where you live) and just hop online.
 
Microwave is plenty reliable and dependable if your using the right equipment and have engineered the WLAN properly. Completely dependable under those conditions. Unfortunately the SOHO gear crowd makes the first parameter of that equation dificult to comply with. Slow? Yep, even the 54 Mb variants compared to copper or fiber but I have WLAN's up and running without hiccups all over the southeast with practically zero service calls. Hardware fails, but overall you just have to do it right to trust a wireless LAN or WAN infrastructure. So yeah, hopefully things will get better in the future for affordable consumer wireless solutions but hopefully the people putting them together will get better in the future as well. As far as latency. It's a non-issue but again, the gear and the network architect have to be on top of things.
 
Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
i mean the practicality of roaming your house and still being able to surf the web is amazing, however the speeds and unreliability of wireless ethernet are just awful at this point. Hopefully things will get better in the future.
Click to expand...

Buy a real piece of hardware and you wont have these problems...Linksys and Netgear are HOME units, they arent intended to do business apps.
Wireless is just a replacement for the wire you use now..it isnt a networking solution.

Also, I have yet to se ANYONE use their wireless bandwidth acrosss a cable or DSL connection..if your AP does 3-4mb average, and your cable or DSl is only 1MB (on a good day) how the heck is it slow? If you are transferring large files, i agree....but if you were smart enough to know a wire would be faster than why would you do it over wireless?

I have been doing wireless for quite some time, it isnt in its infancy by any means..it has been around for awhile...it just has its proper place.
 
Originally posted by: SaigonK it isnt in its infancy by any means..it has been around for awhile...it just has its proper place.
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Very true.

As my "Old" analogy states..

"You do not buy a Yugo to function as a Bulldozer".

Low Power Wireless by it nature will never be 100% proof since it based on transmission, and the amount of Environmental Electrical Noise is growing by the minute.

Few example of good use.

1. Wireless works well for Short distance Internet surfing.

2. Within a confined area. (Like In business setting) they can provide quick Internet and Network access to the Laptops of visitors

3. Bridging with Commercial grade equipment.

People who are buying Inexpensive Entry Level Gizmos, and expecting to cover their ?Mansion? with solid Wireless network, are (at best) ?Naïve?.


 
I'm running 802.11ab and average 36MB throughout the house, typically solid at 48MB. I have a WET11 extending my range to the garage and front yard and one covering the back. I average 7MB through the WET's. All WEP'd at 128 w/MAC filtering and all comps requiring logins.

Bottleneck of the Broadband is really the only limiting factor. Of course placement of the WAP, surrounding architecture, household wireless products (Including microwaves and baby monitors) and whether or not your neighbor's gear transmits into your zone all factor in.

There's quite a bit that can be done to tweak the connection as well via transmission rates, thresholds, intervals etc. if the default configs aren't stable. Just read up on the stuff before you go punchin' numbers cuz you'll get lost at step one and nothing other than a hard reset will bring you back.

I run quite a bit of multimedia over the WAN and don't worry at all about sending large files over the waves. But, if I'm at all concerned about a significant data transfer I just walk into the dungeon and jack into the LAN. No doubt that "Wired" is better for stability and consistent throughput - but add some versatility requirements and you're quite limited w/out a WAP.

the Schtuff works for me.
 
Wireless allows me to walk around the house and backyard with my laptop. It's great. I don't typically due large transfers over my lan, so wired offers no benefit to me. Since I purchased my new Dlink router, my connection has been really stable too. For $29.99 + $50 for the card, I am very happy.
 
try transferring an 800mb file over ANY wireless platform vs. standard 100 mbit ethernet and then come back and talk to me. Wireless still has a long way to go, and yes latency isn't so much an issue provided you have good equipment. Wireless is still in its infancy and a lot of work needs to be done to bring up to anywhere near the reliability of standard 10/100 ethernet.
 
Any? How about 480 Mb full duplex (two radios on each bridge) Point to Point Tsunami bridges. Proxim/Western Multiplex. 100 Mb bridges as well and if the link is engineered properly the throughput is pretty true to the advertised speed. Perhaps you should qualify your challenge or just know a little bit more about what your discussing. There are wireless solutions that will move data faster than a 100 Mb wired Link. Considerably faster. Of course I don't know too many people that would spend 100K on a couple of Western Mux bridges for consumer use but there are very high speed wireless solutions. For the average Joe in his 1500 sq foot apartment or house wireless is no alternative to copper or fiber but I don't think anyone in this thread would propose there is. And yeah, for LAN's wireless is still very young. Started adding them to wired infrastructures in 97. 900 Mhz AP's. Less than a decade for the technology, DSSS or FHSS, available to the general public.Still a way's to go before it becomes a "replacment" technology. Not sure I'd ever replace wire with radio's however enterprise level gear is pretty sturdy when the expectations are realistic and the people building the WLAN's are competent.
 
Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
try transferring an 800mb file over ANY wireless platform vs. standard 100 mbit ethernet and then come back and talk to me.
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Mercedes, Ferrari, Lamborghini, are very good cars (and very expensive), try transferring a Tone of Sand with it.

Quote: "and then come back and talk to me."

 
The only major problem I really have with my wireless is even on blazing fast sites I have a little "load-latency". Once it gets going it's fast but it hiccups at the start.
 
Nobody is claiming it's equal to 10/100 Mbit ethernet. We all recognize wireless for it's strengths and weaknesses. If you didn't, then you are the idiot here.

Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
try transferring an 800mb file over ANY wireless platform vs. standard 100 mbit ethernet and then come back and talk to me. Wireless still has a long way to go, and yes latency isn't so much an issue provided you have good equipment. Wireless is still in its infancy and a lot of work needs to be done to bring up to anywhere near the reliability of standard 10/100 ethernet.
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no it still has many issues. DROPPED connections are a big issue, and this happens with many routers out there. Intermittent interference with 2.4 ghz cordless phones, lets face it our homes are just hostile environments for wireless networks. And i was talking about comparing wired to a feasibly wireless solution not something that costs $100,000. And at $100,000 you can prob. get a wired solution thats even faster. I think new houses should be automatically wired with cat5 just like it would have standard phonelines wired.
 
I don't have many dropped connections, in fact I rarely have them. This is at my previous workplace, home, and school. Also, I believe 802.11a is 5Ghz, so you can use it and your 2.4 ghz wireless phones at the same time.

Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
no it still has many issues. DROPPED connections are a big issue, and this happens with many routers out there. Intermittent interference with 2.4 ghz cordless phones, lets face it our homes are just hostile environments for wireless networks. And i was talking about comparing wired to a feasibly wireless solution not something that costs $100,000. And at $100,000 you can prob. get a wired solution thats even faster. I think new houses should be automatically wired with cat5 just like it would have standard phonelines wired.
Click to expand...

 
"And i was talking about comparing wired to a feasibly wireless solution not something that costs $100,000. And at $100,000 you can prob. get a wired solution thats even faster"

That's why the word "ANY" was poorly chosen. Incidentally, the 45 Mb tsunami bridges, once the original hardware purchase, including tower, ends up being cheaper than paying monthly for a high bandwidth circuit like a T3 over time. As far as your other concerns, that was addressed when I mentioned the level of gear your buying at Best Buy. Dropped connections are either because there is interference, an OS problem or the equipment you have is just not very good equipment. Then your talking about very specific problems based on one of those problems, not the technology itself. People say wireless is this, wireless is that, when in fact they are really talking about the equipment, or a problem they don't understand because they aren't trained to spot them. Wireless as a technology, 802.11x or other wireless technology do not cause drops generally speaking. I could show you installation after installation, some of them numbering in the hundreds of AP (Campus environment) where the wireless coverage and reliability are outstanding. AP's, like switches or hard drives, fail, but as someone who's been putting these things togethers for quite a few years, anyone who thinks wireless LAN's (WAN's too for that matter) can't be VERY reliable, are speaking out of ignorance. People that just have not been exposed to proper WLAN engineering and hardware choice, and installation. What gets me is the people that make blanket statements because their 50 dollar AP/client wireless LAN is flaky. There's a reason buying Cisco, Proxim, or Orinoco hardware is more expensive, and DLink, Netgear, and Linksys stuff is a dime a dozen. Cheap aint just a word to describe the price for the latter.
 
no the problems I'm talking about happens even with quality hardware. With wireless you never have a 100 % reliable connection like you would with a wired solution, which makes sense. With wired the only way your connection can mess up is if the cabling is messed up or there is omsething wrong with your ocmptuer.
 
Is there a point to this thread? No one is denying that wireless has problems. (Well they shouldn't be anyway) Look at cellphones or cordless phones. Of course there are still issues to work out with it. To expect wireless to work just as well as wired is ridiculous. There are plenty of factors affecting wireless - other wireless products working within the same range, humidity, thickness of walls, etc etc. The only factor affecting wired is the actual physical connection itself.

You're right - at the present time, the only thing wireless is really good for is sharing net access without wires and the occassional file transfer. To expect it to do everything wired does and just as well is stupid
 
"With wireless you never have a 100 % reliable connection like you would with a wired solution"

Completely false as a blanket statement. But I agree with Angry. This thread is tired and I would rather let you maintain your ignorance of this subject than continue it.
 
we just recently had wireless APs installed in our common room in uni and it was an absolute lifesaver. Being able to wander about from desk to desk to show someone else a snippet of code youre working on (or more likely an error 😉) was brilliant. Try doing that when youre tethered to a wired hub...

Did make for some strange looks in the labs though when we were trying to get enough of a signal though the roof to another floor 🙂
 
Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne

try transferring an 800mb file over ANY wireless platform vs. standard 100 mbit ethernet and then come back and talk to me. Wireless still has a long way to go, and yes latency isn't so much an issue provided you have good equipment. Wireless is still in its infancy and a lot of work needs to be done to bring up to anywhere near the reliability of standard 10/100 ethernet.
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Good equipment? How about the proper use of consumer grade dime a dozen cookie cutter Linksys gear 🙂.

Heh, I just xferred 807 MB from my LAN fileServer to Wireless enabled Laptop in a average of 12 minutes (performed identical file transfer three times - the third time turning on all wireless products in the house to see if interference degraded quality = nope).

I have 108 MB MAX Bandwidth MAX Bandwidth from my NIC to WAP, so it appears the bottleneck here is my wired gear and the 'slow' dual proc SCSI RAID gear the data is being read from 😉. I have 64bit WEP enabled as well as MAC filtering on the security end.

I realize the links I have posted do not guarrantee my claims so if any of you have shareware that can time and verify a file transfer from start to finish I'll gladly run a few sets for you. Though, my Wireless gear works great and I don't really care if anyone believes it.

The 108MB spec - Turbo Mode is enabled (using both the 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz Channels and my Tri-band NIC). I haven't the faintest idea whether the 108 is a misread or whether Turbo Mode works this way or that. It's enabled and my average xfer of a 807 MB worth of files in one shot came in at 12 minutes. Hmm, I wonder if a solid 800MB file would transfer more quickly. Mabye I'll do a 800MB Zipped... Nah, gotz better things to do.

I don't often have dropped connections, and I'm not claiming anything that wireless is not. It's been stable for me and I figure Wireless is good stuff if you have a conducive environment, know how to set up your gear and have realistic expectations. Just that today, my expectations are a few levels higher 😉.

(By the way, even Wired suffers from packet loss and data collision at times, so pointing out that Wireless isn't 100% reliable is relative. It's an excellent "Relative" point, but relative nonetheless).

So, that'd be my answer to your challenge about ANY/FEASIBLE/WIRELESS vs Wired. I was quite happy with my 36MB average WAP connection on cheap gear but your claim inspired me to learn my gear a little better. HooooYaaaa!! We're playing with fire now 😀. If only my broadband wasn't capped at 1.5 🙁



 
THe only thing wireless is good for is sharing internet. For file sharing wired ethernet cannot be beat.
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Shouldn't this thread have ended right there? Why'd we need 20+ posts to determine that a wired LAN is gonna be faster than a wireless?
 
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