BF2S Forums Wired vs. Wireless networking.

schmitty wrote:

This is a noob question but I can't find a satisfactory answer.   I bought a D-Link Rangebooster N Wireless router.  Now, for my gaming PC I used a cat 5 cable to connect to the router.  But our other comp in the living room, I bought a wireless adapter (USB) that connects around 240-260Mbps (boasts speeds up to 300Mbps, so not too shabby).

Now my gaming pc is only connecting at 100Mbps.   Is the wireless computer actually a faster connection/higher bandwidth?  Because I thought that wired is the best possible connection.  Or is it measured differently?

Basically, I can download on wired pc at around 700KB/s, which is what my ISP broadband download speed is capped at.   I haven't been able to check my download speed on the other PC, but I would imagine that it is limited because its a USB adapter, not PCI.  But if it was PCI, would I be able to download at a higher rate than my 100Mbps wired pc, if theoretically I had no cap on my broadband?

Thanks...

The 802.11n specifices an optical throughput of about 250Mbps. What you'd typically get is closer to 80-90Mbps due to the volatility of the medium, the ease of signal degradation, and wavelength contention.

While your network is ethernet, and inherently built around multiple access, you're on a UTP cable plugged straight into your router, so you aren't contending for throughput beyond the distribution layer. In a typical scenario, your wired ethernet connection would probably offer you more available throughput, and definitely in a much more reliable and secure manner.

In an ideal scenario where you'd actually get the full throughput available to you with a wireless connection, which is very unlikely outside of a controlled test, you'd be able to pull through the full ~250Mbps per second, and with USB2.0 at 480Mbps, you'd be well within the limitations of that interface.

As for what's best, wireless sacrifices throughput, security, stability and private segmentation for mobility, so in terms of raw performance, wired is still, and probably always will be better in that regard. The interface throughput standard for wired ethernet in consumer NICs is 1Gbps today, and 10Gbps isn't terribly far off mainstream.

Last edited by mikkel (2008-01-11 14:44:11)