Would Switching To Wireless Internet Slow Things Down?

[Afro1989]

Hola. I was wondering if browsing the web, chatting on Adium, or downloading movie trailers, icons, and wallpapers would be slower if I used my wireless router instead of using an ethernet cable to that same router. I used the wireless connection on my cousin's Macbook and it seemed just as fast, but I just wanna' know the facts from you guys.

The only reason I would like to do this is to have less wires going against my wall.

Thanks.

 

[yellow]

Well, it depends on the speed of your internet connection.

It's rather unlikely that it's faster than 54Mbps.. so the speed bottleneck is likely to be your internet connection and not the wired/wireless connection.

However, if you're stuck with 802.11b (11Mbps) and have an internet connection faster then that.. well wired is the way to go.

Hope that makes sense.

 

[Steve1496]

Probably not, unless your connection is over 54MBPS (if you use 802.11G), or 11MBPS (if you use 802.11b). Your connection probably isn't that fast anyways..


Steve

 

[Afro1989]

How can I tell exactly how fast my internet connection is? Thanks.

 

[Felldownthewell]

I've noticed that in terms of browsing and chatting wireless is just as fast (I have a high-end netgear wireless g with comcast cable), however, when downloading a large file (for example downloading HL2 from Steam in bootcamp) I get 200 kb/s on wireless while I get 400-600 kb/s through an ethernet cable...

It may just be me and my equipment but I would say unless you are in a big hurry to download files over 2gb wireless will work just fine.

 

[yellow]

Well, you should already know from your ISP.

But as a GENERAL idea (not to be taken literally, as speed responses will change drastically depending on the time of day, the amount of traffic, and the load on the routers between you and the service), you can test your speed here:

http://miranda.ctd.anl.gov:7123/
http://www.dslreports.com/
http://reviews.cnet.com/7004-7254_7-0.html

There are a million more sites out there like that..

 

[AllieNeko]

WRONG to the people who said that.

802.11g has REAL-WORLD throughput of 15-18 mbps

802.11b has REAL-WORLD throughput of 3-4mbps

Basically, for DSL neither will be a bottleneck (for most DSL), for cable, 802.11b will bottleneck it (usually) but 802.11g won't, and for fiber-to-the-home (such as FIOS), either will be a bottleneck.

 

[Afro1989]

Would this help?

 

[yellow]

Would this help?

Considering that's the info for a wired connection, no. As it's only going to report the speed of your router (100Mbps). It has nothing to do with your broadband speed of your ISP.

And markie is completely right, 54Mbps and 11Mbps are strictly theoretical max speeds. Though I'm suspect of his 'real-world' numbers, I have nothing to back it up with. But ultimately, he's the closest with his sumation. It all depends on how you're connected. Is it cable? DSL? University?