[kinda OT] home network speed

[Thomas Milne]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 11:09 PM, Brandon Sandrowicz <bsandrow-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 6:40 PM, Thomas Milne
> <tbrucemilne-TcoXwbchSccMMYnvST3LeUB+6BGkLq7r at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> Not sure even what question to ask, but basically I've got my desktop
>> machine with an onboard gigabit ethernet, a Linksys WRT54GL, and a
>> multimedia drive connected to my TV which has wireless networking
>> built in:
>>
>> http://www.mediagateusa.com/mg800hd.html
>>
>> For wireless, it supports:
>>
>> (Wi-Fi) IEEE 802.11 b/g/n; Wireless Security: WEP, WPA-P5K, WPA2-PSK,
>> Wireless infrastructure and Ad-Hoc Mode
>>
>> I've been seeing transfer speeds around 1.2 MB/s, which is about
>> 1/10th what I was hoping/expecting. Was I expecting too much? This is
>> the first time this has ever been an issue, so I'm not sure how to
>> investigate this.
>
> Is the drive connecting with 802.11b?  Try changing your network over
> to be 802.11g-only in the router/ap settings.  Apparently when you are
> in mixed mode -- b and g -- if a 802.11b device connects to the
> network the entire network speed drops. I'm not sure if this is
> AccessPoint-dependent or just a product of the 802.11 wireless
> protocol, but I've heard of it.
>
> Another thing to consider is wireless interference. For example,
> 802.11g's max speed of 54Mbit/s, but that is the theoretical max.  If
> there is a lot of interference from other wireless networks, devices,
> microwaves in operation, etc, this can effect the speed causing it to
> drop.  Sometimes this is also wireless chip and/or driver dependent.
> For example, the ath5k kernel driver doesn't deal with noise as well
> as the ath_pci (MadWifi) driver. I've been too lazy to change it back,
> but when I connect to the network after getting home from work it
> connects/disconnects at least 2 or 3 times before it decides to keep a
> stable connection (which is interesting seeing as my laptop is at most
> 6 feet from the access point with nothing but air in between).  I've
> also seen claims on mailing lists that the ath5k doesn't run at 'full
> speed' compared to the ath_pci driver with the same hardware on the
> same network.
>
> The only thing that you could try to do to deal with interference (at
> least interference from other networks) is to try different channels
> for your access point, but even then you may have issues.  Those
> 'SuperG' routers that used to be popular basically increased their
> bandwidth by using *all channels at once*... creating a helluva lot of
> interference for other networks that were too close.

Thanks for the info, I looked up the specs for 802.11 and found that
what I should be expecting is around 22 Mb/s, so really not much more
that I'm seeing now. From all of this, am I correct in assuming that I
would be better off connecting the media drive to the network with a
cable instead?
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