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[dich]

Hi folks,

I'd like to ask a (seemingly) stupid question: what throughput can one expect using wifi router to bind two adjacent computers?

In my setup, it's a dir-635 in 802.11g/n shared mode, a laptop with intel 5100 builtin card and a PC with a dlink usb wifi adapter. Both are configured to use the 'n' mode, the signal quality shown is 60-90%, the reported wifi connection speeds are sround 150Mbit/s.

Now the problem - if I tranfser files between these two PCs, the average connection results in 2MB/s (~16Mbit/s). It spikes up and down to max. of 4MB/s. I find it a bit too slow for the reported connection speeds. The funny thing is - if I try to download something from internet through the same wifi router, I achieve sustained 3.5MB, with max. of 4MB/s that corresponds to my ISPs max. speed of 32Mbit/s.

I find it weird that my internal WLAN is slower than the same WLAN downloading from outside! Does anyone have a clue?

Thanks for any help!

[FurryNutz]

Thats about the rate of speed when xfering files between Wifi to WiFi devices. The problem is the nature of the beast. WiFi is suspeptible to many interferences and attenuation. Are there any other Wifi routers in the area? Any cordless phones in the house that run 2.4Ghz?

What security mode are you using? WEP, WPA or WPA2? Preferred is WPA2 and Cipher type to AES only if your devices support this.

[dich]

Thanks for your reply!

Yes, there are a couple more wifi routers in the neighbour appartaments (5-10m away behind 3-4 walls). Their signal reaches me at 30/70 and 40/70 level (from iwlist wlan0 scan).
And there's one cordless phone (DECT) which probably runs on 2.4GHz.
I'm using WPA2-PSK with AES encryption, all my devices happily support it. Both PCs are within direct line of sight from the router (not from each other).

I'll try to emphasize my concern once more: if each of the devices is capable of downloading at 32Mbit/s from WAN, why can't they exchange files faster than 16MBit/s (in average) in WLAN ? Especially while they report connection speeds of 100-150MBit/s ?

Just to make sure - does anyone around manage to get higher transfer speeds in the (internal) wifi network with a DLink router? What models?
Thanks!

[FurryNutz]

Well having other Wifi and radio signals around the same frequency is probably not helping here and that will have an impact on your system.

Again, Connection speeds differ from actual file download and xfer speeds. The connection speeds are a standard that Mfrs use and develop so that the devices make a connection at that speed. This doesn't effect actual file xfers and downloads. What effects that is many variables like Hw, singal strength, external interferences and Pc security SW and over all the technology behind the wireless. The same goes pretty much even for a LAN wired connection. I've never seen a 100Mb or even a 1Gb file download or xfer. Just the way it is. If you getting 16Mb avg file downloads or xfers over wireless then your going just fine. This has been going on for years. Member dialup? 56k? I never say anywhere close to 56k download speeds ever. 

Again, it all has to do with marketing and education. I hate the way they market wireless and computers in general. They should market the file speeds vs connection speeds and I wish they would stop selling hard drives sizes vs actual. You'll never get a 1TB drive fullly, after it's formatted, all you see is about 900-850Mb left. Hate that.


So all you can do is to ensure that your system is set up well, try to lower any external interferrences like cordless phones if you can or use them sparingly or as far away from the router as possible. I have one kinda next to mine however the router is set up for 5Ghz on mine. Use InSSIDer application to check other near by WiFi routers and the channels they use and use one thats not in use. Your WPA2 and AES is preferred. I would switch the modes from Mixed all to Single mode G or Mixed G and N if you have N supported devices.

Let us know how it works out.

[dich]

hi! thanks again for your reply!

I'm fully sympathic with your hatred towards "marketing" numbers vs "real" numbers, this is indeed annoying and disgusting. However, what I'm currently trying to figure out is not at the ~10% level like we have with HDD, or wired LAN. I mean, in 100Mbit wired LAN I regularly get download speeds of 8MBytes/s, which makes like 64Mbit, right? Say, roughly, more than half of what was announced. Here, I bought 300Mbit/s router and a 300Mbit/s card. They do connect at an announced speed of 150Mbit/s - fine, let's accept announced MAX speed vs real. Now, when the "connection" speed is told to be 150Mbit, and the download speed drops do 16Mbit, this is 10x slower! AND it's ~20x slower than the announced maximum speed! Hell, they could as well sold it as 20Gbit/s router, who cares?

Concerning the restricted setup - yes, I've tryed switching off all the mobile and wireless phones, stick to N-only mode, and leave only these two single PCs running at home. I can't affect the neighbours routers, of course, but still, removing most of the interference is not helping much, the only thing is that my actual connection speed doesn't fluctuate like easter bunny from 0 to 3MBytes/s but stays roughly constantly at 2.5MBytes/s. That's the most I managed to get from 2 Dlink wireless-300-N devices (and another one is from Intel).

If no other solution is found, I plan to sell all of my external wifi cards on ebay and switch to wired ethernet-through-powerline solutions wherever possible. I'm fully fed up, and I don't buy those lovely fake numbers anymore. In fact, I would be glad a Dlink technician demonstrate me a setup where two PCs connect through my router wirelessly with half of the announced speed. I will then apologize and accept my foolishness...

[FurryNutz]

Would you be interested in letting someone use teamviewer.com with you and check your router settings?

[dich]

Never used it before, but I can try.
Alternatively we can use skype screen sharing.
I'll PM you with my screen name if you like.
And a BIG THANKS again for all help and support!

[FurryNutz]

Hey, understand the frustrations man. I can't guarantee anything however having someone to help out might beable to figure things out or if not, offer up some better alternatives.  There is a DGL-4500 router on sale right now, hehe. PM me the TV info and let see if we can help out.