Any point in fast network if ADSL is slow?

Faster internal speeds make sense if you are running a file server on an internal network. For example, my file server is attached by a wired connection to my router but my laptop is wireless

802.11g, with a nominal speed of 54 Mbs. I am a Linux developer and do lots of compilations of the kernel. When the kernel source is on an NFS mounted disk, I'm glad for every extra bps that I can get.

My broadband connection is Time-Warner cable with a download speed of 8 Mbs and

512 Kbs upload. If I were using 802.11b wireless (11 Mbs), the wireless would not be able to keep up with the network.

I cannot use DSL because my phone company cannot provide it. I'm in a town of

5000 people only 20 miles from downtown Kansas City. Although my neighborhood is linked to the central exchange by optical fiber, the outgoing connection to the world is ancient copper. Dialup cannot go faster than 28.8!

Larry

If all you plan to pass is just internet traffic, then no, but if you plan on passing LAN traffic...

Especially if you plan to pass media. Right now, wanting to stream HD through the house will have you going back to cables in a hurry.

You may have that backwards... From the numbers above, it looks like the network (cable at 8Mbs), can't keep up with the wireless at 11.... I know new math is sort of wierd, but 11 is still a bigger number than 8 isn't it? :)

Hi,

You math is fine, but what he was suggesting is that a "11Mbs" 802.11b won't be able to support 8Mbs because 802.11b's "real world" speed is about 6Mbs if you are lucky and all the planets are lined up...

Exactly. A good rule of thumb is that if your interface is set at M Bps, you will be able to transmit at about .5 to .6 M. My actual number, measured with Iperf, is 6.5 Mbs with a nominal rate of 11 Mps.

Larry

Larry Finger hath wroth:

will be able to

with a nominal rate

You have 2 thumbs. Therefore two rules will work. The first rule is

50% of connection speed or less (not more). The 2nd is that all statistics and benchmarks lie in the optimistic direction.

My calcs for an 11Mbit/sec association show 5.9Mbit/sec maximum:

for TCP traffic. You can go up to 7Mbit/sec using UDP, but I've never seen it using Iperf. Most of my typical field tests (with reflections and interference) yield about 3.5Mbit/sec with an 11Mbit/sec association.

Did you really get 6.5Mbit/sec with Iperf? If so, do you recall the command line incantation or parameters (packet size, TCP/UDP, etc)? No points for setting up 802.11b/g and just noticing it was running at

11Mbits/sec. I might easily switch momentarily to a higher speed and wreck the benchmark. You gotta fix the speed in the access point if you want a meaningful test.