Are there any general things to look for to speed up wi-fi performance, Just got a new DELL laptop with built in 1350 wifi card. I am running on an 11b network but it does seem to be a lot slower than my previous laptop fitted with pcmcia belkin wifi card.
Things i'm noticing are file copying across the network mainly seems really sluggish compared to what i'm used to so i was wondering if there are any common things to look for which can help increase its performance.
Thanks,
Turn off power save mode....
Grzegorz
Seen this type of post quite alot.
Im not sure if this would help, but I would like to know if it does. Is Power saving mode on? If so put it on continuous and see if it helps.
In power saving mode the adapter actually goes to sleep several times per second to save battery which causes alot of overhead. Rather it affects it during a continuous download, Im not sure. During its short sleep time the AP will buffer the data till the client wakes up again.
If you copy a lot of files on a regular basis, set up a batch file in DOS, it is much faster than drag and drop in Windows Explorer.
Yes. You start by posting numbers. What performance are you measuring for things like file copies? What were you expecting? What's your connection speed? (1, 2, 5.5, 11) How is the performance from something on the LAN (file server or wired client)? Is it symmetrical (same speed in both directions) or does it go faster in one direction? Can you retest with the Belkin equiped laptop for a numerical comparison?
For 11Mbit/sec, you should be getting about 6Mbits/sec thruput.
I've noticed that XP SP2 seems to speed up wireless performance. No clue why.
Several people mentioned wireless power save.
I've noticed that wireless to wireless copies through access points sometimes runs into a problem if the access point has a diversity reception system (two antennas). It takes some time for the access point to switch antennas. If one client has a better signal into one antenna, while the other client works best with the other antenna, the system with "thrash" between the two antennas and slow things down. This isn't very common, but possible.
Any chance that you've inherited a source of interference in the time between you tested the Belkin equipped laptop and now?
Uh, with the latest and greatest (and most expensive) WAPs, maybe so. On my BEFW11S4, I get more like 3-4 Mb/s doing file copies between my wireless laptop and one of my wired PCs.
If you post specifics on the equipment, distance, walls inbetween and what you are trying to accomplish as well as what speed/throughput you are achieving, the people here may be able to help. Without such, don't waste your time.
I assume that you intended your reply to be to the OP's note, not to my reply.
Well, I just ran a quick and potentially inaccurate test in my palatial office and got about 6.0 Mbits/sec using 802.11b. Of course, I was about 3ft away from the DLink DI-614+ router with a customers Sony Vaio PCG-FX220 laptop and an Orinoco Silver card. 11mbit/sec association and 64 bit WEP. My test was copying a single 10MB file from my SCO OSR5 file server running Samba something. File copies use TCP. I also ran a really crude test using netcat -u to dump the 10MB directly to an IP socket using UDP. Slightly slower than TCP. It should have been faster. I'll figure out why later.
3-4Mbits/sec on file copies is about what I get when I have a 5.5Mbit/sec connection. Maybe that's why you're not getting the "normal" 6Mbits/sec. I just went outside and the connection slowed down to 5.5Mbits/sec. I got 2.8Mbits/sec with file copy. It should have been a bit higher but I'm probably getting interference from the neighbors.
Nope - my laptop sits <10 ft. from my BEFW11S4 and always runs at 11 Mb/s, and 3-4 Mb/s is what I get copying large files from the laptop to a (100 Mb/s) wired desktop. WEP made a little difference, but <10% IIRC. My tests were all run using a network mapped drive, pushing large files from the W2K laptop to a W9x desktop via Explorer's cut'n'paste. I haven't redone any testing to XP desktops -- that might be faster.
I use big single files for network datarate testing - 300-600 MB, and I measure transfer time with a watch since some network software reports datarates rather inaccurately. And, FWIW, my WiFi segment only has one node plus the WAP, so I'm not sharing the 11 Mb/s (other than the unavoidable HDX nature of WiFi). Also, my MTUs all match (1500 bytes) and the RWINs are all pretty big.
Well, I think I screwed up. I ran a more organized test. I didn't want to wait around for a very large file to copy, so I used a 30MByte file. The previous Vaio XP laptop walked out with the customer, so I dragged out my ancient P133 Micron Laptop running W98SE and using an Orinoco Silver card. I used my stopwatch for timing. I renamed the file for each test, emptied the temp files, and made sure I didn't have anything in a cache somewhere. I did everything twice because I forgot to turn off the virus scanner. Connections were 11mbits/sec at about 15ft with 64bit WEP enabled.
Server Type of copy Speed Mbits/sec W98SE Explorer drag 3.2 W98SE DOS copy 3.8 W2K Explorer drag 4.0 w2K DOS copy 4.4 Samba Explorer drag 3.8 Samba DOS copy 4.4
Unix UDP to raw socket 5.4 (ends in /dev/null) using netcat out Unix UDP to raw socket 4.8 (ends in /dev/null) using netcat in
I'm not sure where I screwed up, but it was probably my math. I have gotten 5-6 Mbits/sec thruput on 802.11b access points in the past but I don't recall the setup. I'll retest at home, where I have BEFW11S4 v4 and when I can borrow another XP laptop.
Let's see what Google excavates. This article:
Tim Higgins claims 5.5Mbits/sec, with up to 7Mbits/sec on 802.11b "enhanced" units.
Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.