If wifi is 54mbps, why so long to transfer a file?

[ss957916]

I Handbraked a Dvd on my partners MacBook and wanted to transfer it onto my mbp, so did so using our wifi network (by doing the whole file transfer drop box shenanigans). But the 1.01GB file took an hour to transfer! Surey it should have taken a matter of minutes? I would have expected Bluetooth to have been quicker in fact.

Was that the best/quickest way to transfer large files mac to mac?

 

[Chundles]

54Mbps = 6.75MBps at it's absolute theoretical maximum. WiFi will never hit that speed.

Bluetooth would take so much longer.

Speed sounds about right.

 

[yetanotherdave]

Depends on where the copy was initiated, other traffic on the network, signal strength on both computers, whole bunch of variables.

You can improve transfer times by using 1) wireless N 2) connecting directly mac to mac instead of via a router 3)ethernet 4) firewire 5) usb stick.

 

[ss957916]

54Mbps = 6.75MBps at it's absolute theoretical maximum. WiFi will never hit that speed.

Could you explain that further?

 

[yetanotherdave]

Could you explain that further?

54 megabits per second, divide 54 by 8 (8 bits in a byte) to get your speed in megabytes per second. 54/8=6.75.

And that's the maximum throughput. All sorts of environmental factors limit the speed.

 

[soLoredd]

On my Airport N network, I can get 7-9MBps when transferring from my MBP to Mac Mini. If I put the computers next to each other, it reaches about 10MBps. I never realized how faster N is to G.

I find though its easier to just keep an ethernet cable in my laptop bag. So quick and easy. I just queue up several HandBrake encodes on my MBP and transfer to the Mini with ethernet.

 

[Cave Man]

Was that the best/quickest way to transfer large files mac to mac?

By ethernet cable if gigabit, by fw cable otherwise.

You're getting about 2.8 megabytes per second trasfer by wifi, which is probably typical in most environments.

 

[whooleytoo]

Could you explain that further?

It has been answered above, but just to add further:

Files & disk sizes are almost always measured in multiples of bytes, designated by a capital "B" in the units. E.g. Kilobytes (KB), Megabytes (MB) etc.

In communications, it's more common to use multiples of bits (where 8 bits = 1 byte), designated by a lowercase "b". Kilobits per sec (Kbps), Megabits per sec (Mbps).

For various reasons, a wireless connection rarely delivers the maximum throughput for very long; ~22Mbps is probably a typical throughput for a 802.11g Wifi connection; or just under 3MB copied per second; right about what you're seeing.