bothwired and wireless available at same time?

I've just switched from desktops to an R61e, and am not quite up to speed with notebooks. Both my wired and wireless connections show as connected. Does that mean if I'm using the wired connection and decide to go into another room, all I need to do is disconnect the wired connector, and the wirelss connection will automatically kick in? forgive me if I'm confused. Thanks in advance.

Len

 

That's correct.

 

Yepperunni

 

Many thanks!!!

 

A thought that came up after reading this: why can't wired and wireless be used at the same time for boosted performance?

 

the OS is gonna pick the preferred route in reguards to the lowest metrics. do a "route print" command to see this happening. wired is the preferred if the connection is 100base over G or A. Not sure about N. just do a google search on route print and you can find out for yourself what you are using. basically its like having a fault tolerant connection. wired is always faster.

 

That doesn't really tell me why they can't be used at the same time.

Unless you're answering something else.

 

sorry, in short:

the operating system picks the fastest possible connection and defaults to that. you need special hardware instructions to merge two incoming connections. some nvidia chipsets do this on desktop motherboards along with certain routers on the market.

 

Well an application will use either one or another. I have this setup quite a bit. I have my laptop connected to the school's wireless network and connected via wire to my server.

What I have happen a lot is the applications will switch between adapters. AOL Instant Messenger will drop every 5 minutes and reconnect becasue it it switching from going through my server to the wirless, or vice versa.

When I'm doing file transfers while connected this way, it automatically goes through the wired network even though it can connect through both.

So, in short, what techboydino said - the OS will pick the fastest route. There are some applications that will run on multiple network cards but those are server programs.

 

My main point is why are we limited to one (the faster) route? Is it difficult for a computer to process packet sending and receiving thru multiple routes?

 

yes you are correct, the computer (os & hardware) need to be setup to do this. so far the only onboard ive seen is with nvidia chipsets. check it out here. but you can set a default adapter if you like.