How do I get my wireless as fast as cable ?

The title says it all, there´s a huge download speed reduction when going wireless versus cable, I have a Netgear 54MBit router.

If I got a 108Mbit router, would that be as fast as a cable, or do I have to go higher ?

Thanks

 

uh.. What cable? You mean ethernet wired or cable connection (wan)? Ethernet is usually 100mbit unless you have 1000mbit network card. So if you get a 108mbit router I guess it will be just slightly faster than the 100mbit ethernet.

 

Most retail cable services top out at 6-8Mbps...15 TOPS. So a 54Mbps router has more to spare.

 

As mentioned, it doesn't matter if you have a 108mbps router when cable only goes up to 4-8mbps max wired. When wireless, the speed will knock down another, 30%-50%, as it is wireless and there will be traffic and disturbances in the atmosphere which sometimes halves the wireless. The 54mbps/108mbps is more of a marketing gimmick

 

Wireless Vs Wired, wired always wins. That the benifit of the wire.

You would need to get a matching 108mbps card for the 108mbps router. Even then there is a much greater overhead for wireless so you would not hit wired speeds. I solved part of the problem with a 4GB SD card. My wife's laptop has wireless b and I have g so transfers between the 2 are super slow. I picked up a 4GB SD card for $39.00 and now we have a huge sneaker net.

 

Yeah, I would need a new card too, but does this mean that wireless can never be as fast as a cable ?

Netgear claim to be as fast as cable with this one:

http://www.netgear.com/Products/RoutersandGateways/RangeMax240WirelessRouters/WPNT834.aspx

 

Well if your cable is only 10mbit then wireless will of course beat it. It's just wireles isn't as stable as wired and not so good for fps gaming. But unless your transferring large amount of data over the network you shouldn't feel the difference anyway.

There is also the new wireless n which is much faster than 100mbit cable.

 

I get insane downloads, for what I think of wireless, sometimes. The other day I was getting 1.4MB/second from my router!

 

I've always gotten 1.1.1-5 mb/s with my router (wired or wireless) - though that largely depends on the service you subscribe to

 

I have a 11mb/t line, if I use cable I download with about 1,1Mbit/s, using wireless it´s down to 700-800Mbit/s, so huge difference. The externet is 100Mbit.

 

My 125mbps wireless give me ~2MB/s download speed. Where my wired is 5mbps. If you have more than 1 wireless client you bandwidth is divided by the number of users.

Wired will always be faster.

 

I've found that the speed I get is different when I'm on wired. When I'm wireless I'll get anywhere from 8mbps to 14mbps (rarely... like sitting next to the AP) and when I'm wired in, I get anywhere from 16mbps to 26mbps. (Of course, these results are on speed tests only, I don't think I've ever had a download server that had that much bandwith. I tested with www.speakeasy.net/speedtest. I'm on Comcast in Chicago. My upload is normally around 1535kbps regardless of wired/wireless

 

Hey wii,

OK, just so I can understand here. I read your question as being in regards to your internet connection itself. Are you asking is can you upgrade to a faster router/network card (NIC for short) and increase your intetnet download speed?

If that is what you are asking. A couple folks already explained it...no.

A couple posts have already outlined why this is the case. The internet connection is the rate limiting of the two connections you have by at least a factor of 5-10x (minimum). So increasing the speed of your connection from the computer to the router will have zero effect on the download speed from the internet. It gets more detailed then that but in a nutshell that is the deal.

Also, remember that you do not dlownload from all sites at the same speed. Many other factors go into determining the effective data xfer rate from a website. Again there is more to it then simply the internet connection you have.

 

I think the cheapest way for me is to move my connection from the wall to the room where I have my PC, so I can use cable. That way I would have the best connection and not using wireless.

Thanks a lot