Airport extreme and Powerbook ti667

[toddbee]

Hey guys i have a question. If i use my laptop wirelessly with my airport extreme early generation with b/g i get approx 3.5 mb speed according to a speed test website. This is as fast a connection i can get. Now if i take the wire right out of the router and stick it into the ethernet connection on my laptop i get 9mb. why is this? is there a limit to the airport card i have in my laptop? i have full signal on my airport too. Any answers? thanks.
Todd

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Hey guys i have a question. If i use my laptop wirelessly with my airport extreme early generation with b/g i get approx 3.5 mb speed according to a speed test website. This is as fast a connection i can get. Now if i take the wire right out of the router and stick it into the ethernet connection on my laptop i get 9mb. why is this? is there a limit to the airport card i have in my laptop? i have full signal on my airport too. Any answers? thanks.
Todd

Yes, the card you have is only an '802.11b' card, not 'g'. It has a theoretical maximum speed of 12 Mb/s, but in reality, 3.5 Mb/s isn't too unrealistic.

The only way to get faster speeds would be to purchase a PC Card wireless card (one that plugs in the slot in the side of the computer, rather than the internal slot,) that supports 802.11g or 802.11n. Then it would be capable of your full internet connection speed.

 

[mfacey]

I used to have a TiBook 667Mhz and I seem to remember it was equipped with a B (11Mbps) airport card. This means that you're speed is capped somewhat. Keep in mind that the 11 Mbps is a theoretical maximum speed, so your finding that the ethernet connection is faster is not surprising (it has a theoretical max of 100Mbps). So in this case your wifi card is the bottle neck in the connection.

Edit: Need to start typing faster

 

[toddbee]

Thanks guys. I just ordered a new mac book pro which will primarily be connected to the internet via wireless. I was worried that it would be capped at 3.5 mb when my service is 10mb. i assume i should be able to get full speed with the newer airport card, am i correct. what is the actual speed on the 54mb g spec?

 

[mfacey]

Thanks guys. I just ordered a new mac book pro which will primarily be connected to the internet via wireless. I was worried that it would be capped at 3.5 mb when my service is 10mb. i assume i should be able to get full speed with the newer airport card, am i correct. what is the actual speed on the 54mb g spec?

The actual speed is hard to predict, it depends on a lot of factors. It will most likely be faster than your current connection though. If you want to open up the connection completely you should invest in the latest Airport base station with the 802.11N speeds.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

802.11g is plenty fast for my 12 Mb cable connection. I get the same speed over a multiple-'Wireless Distribution' 802.11g network as I do over direct-connect Ethernet. 802.11n's main benefits are increased RANGE and faster LOCAL speeds.

802.11's maximum speeds are generally about 1/3 the 'advertised' speed. So 802.11b's 11 Mb/s is realistically (as you found,) about 3-4 Mb/s. 802.11g's 54 Mb/s is realistically about 20 Mb/s, and 802.11n's 300 Mb/s is realistically about 100 Mb/s. (Yes, that's right, 300 Mb/s 802.11n is really only as fast as 100 Megabit Ethernet. That's why it's not that big a deal that Apple's 802.11n AirPort router only has 100 Megabit Ethernet ports, not Gigabit.)