Network Adapters: USB vs PCI

PCI

Roger,

Jeff is the expert > I just purchased a computer and I am about to include it to our

If you've just bought a new computer then it's likely to have USB 2.0 which supports data rates of up to 480Mbps. Throughput is typically less than this although you didn't say what speed internet connection you had but I doubt it's as fast as that? :)

In practice, you won't see a difference because USB vs PCI speeds when the typically handfull Mbps internet speeds are the bottleneck. PCI will have lower processor overhead but again, with a new PC, that shouldn't manifest itself as a bottleneck.

David.

If it's a brand new computer opening it up to install a PCI card may invalidate the warranty(if it has one).The USB is also useful because of it's flying lead which enables it to be positioned for best performance and not stuck under a desk(like the PCI card in mine)

Since you bought a machine with that sort of restriction. It's not perhaps usual for a desktop system (it _is_ for a laptop - Dell's warranty specifically says that the only think you can open is the memory access to add memory) - but there's nothing to stop a manufacturer telling you that. There _are_ laws in some countries preventing the manufacturer from voiding your warranty in that case, though.

Since when???

Cheers, Rob.

"Call me Roger" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Just to offer my 2c on this topic: In a real world situation, if you are using the internet, you will not notice a difference between them. File transfer in a local network, as mentioned, is affected.

However, in a normal home internet-surfing application I would definetly recommend a USB adapter. I have had many clients who couldn't get a signal with their PCI cards, and simply switching them to USB allowed a more flexible placement of the antenna, and thus solved the problem.

Any major brand adapter should be painless to set up.

Ryan

Have you actually tried this on a USB2 adapter? Just wondering because I can connect an external drive via USB2 and it's fast, way faster than the piddling 24Mbps throughput that the wireless card is going to deliver MAX. The processor overhead on a new machine should not be noticed even in a file sharing scenario.

Having said that, I haven't tried a USB2 wireless adapter but if someone can post numbers from actual tests, I'd be interested to see them because a lot of the theory seems to be hungover from the USB1.1 days.

David.

David Taylor wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.cable.ntlworld.com:

I think that you misunderstood me. I simply meant that wireless itself will have a noticeable affect on speeds locally, however it shouldn't be that noticable when using the "Internet". Perhaps if using a BitTorrent server, or downloading large files from Usenet, but usually, as mentioned, the throughput of the wireless connection exceeds the throughput of the internet connection.

Maybe I am confused as to what you meant?

Possibly. Yes wireless will be slower than wired but that wasn't the question, which was which wireless adapter, USB or PCI. I would offer that there's no difference when talking about USB 2.0.

At the moment yes but come the end of the year when all Telewest and NTL customers are switched from the 3Mbps to 10Mbps and then there's other ISP's offering 24MBps, all of a sudden wireless becomes a *potential* bottleneck if the wireless speeds fall back sufficiently.

David.