Docking Station

how about file transferring speed among your wireless connected laptops? have you compared the speed with a wired connection? With a wired connection, I get 13M/sec, wireless connections? 2M/sec.

 

best wireless is 300mbps. I decabled the house a long time ago and patched the holes ....don't do much laptop to laptop anyway....just to usb externals.

 

Most current computers, including the Dell Latitude E-series, have Gigabit wired Ethernet, or 1,000 Mbps. Pushing 802.11n to the absolute maximum specification of 150 Mbps / 40 MHz stream * 4 streams under perfect conditions (no interference, other wireless networks, etc.) = 600 Mbps. Granted, using wired required at Gigabit speed requires a Gigabit switch, but simple, unmanaged 5-port Gigabit switches can be purchased for <$30 today. Using wired also allows for parallel communications between different computers (e.g. A & B; C & D) at full speed. Using wireless, both pairs of communication would compete for bandwidth within the same wireless network. In short, in terms of performance, wired wins over wireless any day.

 

@ziesemer

Thanks for explaining in such an eloquent way, my experience certainly corroborate your theory.

Wired connection is also much more resistant to interferences and more reliable, unfortunately in a lot of situations it is just not very practical to run a wire. For example, even though I would like to have a wired connection to my Xbox in the living room, I ended up using a wireless bridge.

 

Wireless can be a hassle because of co-channel or near channel interferance. In easy terms that would be other users wirless networks on the same channel or near your channel. Those near networks can and do detract from the amount of bandwidth you have available. Even worse are those networks one or two channels off you, because of the overlap on wireless.

With N it's worse because N takes up more bandwidth in the RF spectrum.
More chances for co-channel interferance.

Add in those damn 2.4ghz phones.... they operate on the same frequency range.

It's like your trying to have a quiet conversation in a thrash metal concert. All the other noise nuls your conversation.

I have had some bad co-channel interfearance problems at home, so I keep the wired network. Damn 2.4ghz Cordless phones.