confused about Wi Fi

I have the same - like most people.
Generally take half your internet speed, and minus one MB for high MB speeds.

Wireless is capped you dont get full bandwidth when your wireless.
To obtain the highest speed you need to be wired so that the computer or xbox can consume more bandwidth and just leave the rest for the other computers on your network.

I always hardwire my xbox and computer-until a more sophisticated highspeed protocol is released (draft N)
then i will probably go completely wireless.

Your wireless connection is rarely the bottleneck, realistically.

Yeah, most people's internet connections don't come anywhere close to the speed of even the most basic wireless connection, so that's typically not the bottleneck. Still, don't rely on any speed tests conducted wirelessly; hardwire in if you're going to do a speed test as a measure of your internet connection speed.

Most DSL is 1.5Mb/s or 3Mb/s down; even the old-school B wireless is 11Mb/s, and the most popular G is 54Mb/s. So most often, a wireless connection does not affect your speed out to the internet. Still, I prefer a wired connection whenever possible because I transfer a lot of files around on my network and because there's less chance for interference.

Simple

Simply put, it's not you, it's them.

There's nothing you can do short of ordering (or demanding) faster internet service.

iRhyknow said:

I have the AirPort Express Base Station with Air Tunes connected to my DSL modem for our small 3 computer network, and to play music from iTunes on our stereo system and it all works great. However its not really as fast as my DSL company says it should be by like half as far as internet speed tests show. Is it the fault of the Base station or the computers we have (in sig)?=

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Neither the computers no the Airport are bottlenecking it unless there's something really wrong with the hardware.

Even the speed of 802.11b (regular, original Airport) is way more than any DSL connection you can get in the States. The problem with DSL is that it gets slower the farther you are from the central office. Unless you KNOW you're close enough to be getting the full advertised speeds, your ISP is going to tell you it's a distance problem, the realities of DSL. Unfortunately they'd be right.

apfhex said:

he problem with DSL is that it gets slower the farther you are from the central office. Unless you KNOW you're close enough to be getting the full advertised speeds, your ISP is going to tell you it's a distance problem, the realities of DSL. Unfortunately they'd be right.

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I thought it was cable as opposed to DSL that went down the further you were away from the exchange and DSL speeds were limited by the quality of the line.

To the OP: There's an off-chance there could be something wrong with your airtunes. I've heard they're not the most reliable pieces of kit.

So it sounds like it's a sound idea to have one's primary desktop computer as the puter wired directly into the Internet connection and secondary computers run wirelessly. since I do a lot of photo uploading this is a key point.

AlBDamned said:

I thought it was cable as opposed to DSL that went down the further you were away from the exchange and DSL speeds were limited by the quality of the line.

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No, cable is equally as fast no matter how far your distance from anything. There are LOTS of rural areas that are miles and miles too far to get DSL, bur can get very fast cable internet.

iRhyknow said:

Faster than what ?

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Faster for local file transfers.

valdore said:

So it sounds like it's a sound idea to have one's primary desktop computer as the puter wired directly into the Internet connection and secondary computers run wirelessly. since I do a lot of photo uploading this is a key point.

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It's not going to make any difference in your upload speeds. But I like to run wired with my primary computer just for the reliability and simplicity.

apfhex said:

No, cable is equally as fast no matter how far your distance from anything. There are LOTS of rural areas that are miles and miles too far to get DSL, bur can get very fast cable internet.

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I remember now: it's the more people that are hooked up to that cable system, the slower it goes. Not so much to do with length but use.