Broadband connection speeds - Wireless v Hard wired

[Keef]

Originally Posted by BOAC

Keef - Hi. Vastly rurual and the router is probably outside 'warchalking' range 512 is 'the best' I am offered, at 4.85k from the exchange. Interesting that you too see a drop in speed on WiFi. Are you saying you can run a hard-wired AND WiFi on the same phone line at the same time or are you swapping connections per machine?

Understood.

I have an "all-in-one" wireless modem router in Essex, with three computers (current, old "Linux experiment" and very old "file backer-upper" connected via cables. The laptop connects via wireless.

Up here in Norfolk, it's three separate boxes doing the same job. Normally, the laptop connects to a docking station, hard-wired to the router. To test it, I plugged in the wireless card and unplugged the Cat5 cable.

I don't know why it would be slower via wireless (when wireless is over 50MB/s) - some day I'll play with WEP and MTU settings and see if any of that makes a difference.

If you're very rural, I'd try with WEP turned off - but as advised above, change the password on the hardware first, just in case!

[Memetic]

The old hard-wired BT Voyager modem gives a speed check of 440 down and 240 up on a 512 connection - not bad I guess.
My 3Com wireless gives around 260 down and 140 up on the same connection.
3Com shows 'signal strength excellent' and 'Speed' varying between 36 and 54 Mbps.
What can I do to improve the wireless data rate, and should those figures be giving better please?

Going back to the original question, are you actually asking how to the the 3com to deliver the same ADSL speeds as the BT Voyager?

If so check you have the latest firmware in the 3Com.

The slowest point in most home networks linked to basic broadband now will the ADSL line, standard ethernet (wired) is 10 Mb/s or 100Mb/s on most modern PCs. WiFi a minimum of 1Mb/s with a degraded signal, so the theoretical 512kb/s down 256kb/s up is slow wrt the rest of the network.

[5dayz]

Seen this b4...

Having configured a number of wireless networks before, and based on the tests you have already performed, I would say that its a security protocol problem, with a problem like this if you can change from wpa to wep, as others have suggested, I have found this to give noticable gains in transmission speeds.

( The problem being that alot of soho routers dont have the mem/cpu (balls) to deal with highspeed signaling (54Mbps) and lengthy encryption bits (128bit) )

This is based on :-

1) You know your line gives top performance with a direct connect usb type adsl modem, ruleing out adsl line associated problems..

2) You have tried the new router with a direct cabled ethernet connection.. and it gives similar results to test 1..

Try one speed test with wpa, wep and unsecured if you can.. that way you can decide on the best privacy policy vs performance...

Hope this helps..

5dayz..

[BOAC]

Sorry for delay - work in the way!

Picking up on a few questions:

Single PC, Win XP SP2 (would like to add IPAQ to the network when it is 'sorted').

Original installation (and running now) 'Hard-wired' BT Basic Voyager 100. Trying WIFI with 3Com 3CRWDR 100A-72 11g firewall/router. I started with 128 bit WEP. Took that off following this thread and enabled PC on MAC address. SMALL speed improvement based on 1 test but still noticeably slower. I have never used WPA.

'Long-line' line classification by BT and max speed 'available' would be between 512 and 1M.

Stoopid question - '54MBPS' is the theoretical data rate? If so, 512kb should be well within its 'capactity'?

For memetic - I appear to have the latest software (Version 2.06) - and yes, I was expecting no significant reduction in speed.

[BOAC]

Just to close this with a note: problem appears to have been the PCI card, an 'Asus'. I have replaced it with a cracking offer on a Belkin 'g' card at a give-away price from Misco. The wifi is vastly improved. I now get 5 bars on the signal instead of 1-2, and speed is correspondingly better.