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Wireless Better/Faster Than Wired?

S

SMCINAZ

2[H]4U
Joined
Jul 19, 2001
Messages
2,688
Have a Draft N router, offbrand Airlink, that works very well for me with solid 300mb connections wirelessly. Wired connections are only standard 10/100 (non-Gigabit). Question: am I really better off going completely non-wired and having a wireless N card on my "main" computer that is currently connected via a Cat5 wired port? In theory, the 300 "should" be much faster transferring files back and forth, just wondering if this is or should be the case, "real world". Anyone tried it both ways?
 
no!

Wireless works by transmitting bursts of packets. It also uses compression to boost transfer speeds. No matter what you can't beat having a hardwire.
 
Wireless is fully of blatant performance claims that don't bear up to even casual inspections. The onus of proof is actually on the wireless side, to demonstrate that "300 Mb/s" is anything more than blatant exaggeration, as has been the case with "54 Mb/s" wireless-g for example.

With "54 Mb/s", your actual throughput is around 22 Mb/s at best, assuming short distances, no obstructions, and no interference and wireless crowding, and under these circumstances, you're probably better off running a wire in any case, and the comparison gets really silly when you consider gigabit.

I'd love to see a "300 Mb/s" wireless throughput of any form, but most especially a demonstration of this performance with devices which only have 100 Mb/s wired Ethernet ports. I'd even like to see controlled unrealistic environmental results with minimal distance and interference -- it'd be interesting to see what the ideal actual throughput results would be; they certainly would not be 300 Mb/s.

The "better than wired" is pure BS these days considering how affordable and common gigabit is. If you're really concerned about LAN speed, the answer is simple -- go wired gigabit. If you're interested in buying into marketing exaggerations and deceiving yourself into thinking that you're getting performance better than wired, then of course don't go gigabit.

Of course, improving wireless performance where there's no choice or desire to run wires is fair game -- I'm mostly writing about the performance comparison of wired vs. wireless. It's simply no contest when the comparison is real.
 
Please try to stay on topic.

I am talking about my exact situation. Saying to "go gigabit" is not my question. I will not be buying another router anytime soon.

With the equipment I have now-the Draft N router which connects and holds 300MB wireless connections, even while transferring files, but is not gigabit wired, is the 300 draft N connection that would literally be 1 inch from the router to the antenna of the N card's antenna, going to be faster, slower, or about the same as being wired? All of the other computers on the network, about 5 of them, are on draft N connections, so the one in question is currently the only wired one.

Draft N 300mb wireless 0 obstructions 1 inch distance vs 100mb wired. Which will be faster file transfers. pc to pc, all other things being equal?
 
Measure it for yourself. For performance, theory is nice, but the real stuff's actual measurement, and no theory beats measurement in your own environment for deciding about performance in your own case.

iperf version 1.7 is a simple tool which can do synthetic network performance measurements.

E.g.

server: iperf -s
client: iperf -c server -l 64k -t 15 -i 3 -r

It's better to do actual large file transfers for thinking about file transfer performance, but that brings drive and OS issues into play, so the pure network measurements are a good start and also valuable in themselves in giving you information without considerations of other factors.
 
there are so many variables its hard to give you an answer, you really need to test it yourself.
 
My opinion: (if you care) Wireless is totally unsecure. anyone can crack it within a couple hours, then they can read all your traffic if they care to, and you wouldn't even be able to detect them. I have disabled wireless on my router purely for this matter.

as far as performance, wireless has much higher overhead, plus that overhead is included in the speed claims. 54Mb is actually between 20Mb and 25Mb. With Wireless N, it uses multiple channels of 54Mb to attain the higher speeds. If there is interference, it will reduce the speed in large chucks. There is also a lot higher latency because transfers take place in bursts and have to be encrypted and coded. The encoding and encrypting is done by the CPU, reducing your performance.

With wired, the overhead is not figured into the speed claim. 100Mb is 100Mb. Also, most NIC drivers have the TCP functions offloaded from the CPU. The steady stream of data reduces latency. If you deal with encryption, then the CPU handles it, but it's not that frequent.

On top of all that, Wired NIC's are usually included in the price of the motherboard.

Simply put, wired networking is the way to go if you can do it. There are cases where it may be impossuble or majorly inconvenient, but if possible, it is cheaper, more secure, and faster, hands down.
 
No encryption. I am using MAC address filtering. The latency is very very minimal, as tested with pinging. Even if the 300mb is cut in half, it would still be faster than the 100mb. I am playing "devils advocate here" as you can tell.

I can tell you and many others are "old school" about this.

I am just not convinced that, in my exact situation, wired is better or faster.
 
I could be on your network in 60 seconds if your using MAC filtering only!
 
well I'll compare my results with you

I have Linksys WRTG54r or w/e the square one is with range boost, I get full signal on my laptop, and I have it wired to my pc aswell

Keep in mind, N and G are rated in mbps mega-bits-per-second, same as wired connections, to get that into mb/s you /8

so 54 is actually ~8.8mb/s and N is actually 38mb/s
100 is about 12MB/S and gigabit is about 120mb/s

transfering files over my network I get 2-4mb/s, from my laptop to my pc, but when its plugged in I get 8-9mb/s over 100mbps router connection or my switch which is gigabit I get about 22mb/s (tracked through my firewall) so n is 6x the speed of wireless G, your looking at 12-24mb/s but in theory, , in reality you never get close to your max with current hardware, I think it took something like a 4 socket dual core opteron system to get close to max on a single gigabit connection

I'd rather go wired for a few reasons, security, I feel more secure :p,speed, it is faster in every case I've seen, plus I set the ips manually and keep ports mapped to each pc! (u can lock ips wirelessly on some routers too)
 
SMCINAZ said:
Even if the 300mb is cut in half, it would still be faster than the 100mb. I am playing "devils advocate here" as you can tell.

I can tell you and many others are "old school" about this.
Click to expand...

You're assuming that you actually have a 300mbps connection. You need to actually TEST it with some large uncompressable file transfers. Try transferring a couple of gb of MP3's and see if you really get 300mbps rates.
 
SMCINAZ said:
I can tell you and many others are "old school" about this.

I am just not convinced that, in my exact situation, wired is better or faster.
Click to expand...

And I can tell that you're into the marketing kool-aid about this. The best answer's been given IMO: Measure it for yourself. You'll get actual results with are meaningful in your context, and only that should really convince you.

What's your excuse for not doing measurement?

Try and see how close you can get "300 Mb/s" to live up to the marketing. It's a worthwhile exercise in itself for your own benefit.
 
seriously if u already have it there and its hooked up, test the transfer rate :) if u have no other pcs on ur network, then hook it up via wire to avoid the extra lag with wireless(if u play anything online) since you connection probably won't exceed 10mbps for a while
@3 feet away i would disable wireless and just go with cat5e/cat6

I guess that link is enough proof :p 100mbps cable > 300mbps wireless
 
SMCINAZ said:
No encryption. I am using MAC address filtering. The latency is very very minimal, as tested with pinging. Even if the 300mb is cut in half, it would still be faster than the 100mb. I am playing "devils advocate here" as you can tell.

I can tell you and many others are "old school" about this.

I am just not convinced that, in my exact situation, wired is better or faster.
Click to expand...

you asked others for facts, where are yours, beside just theories?
 
SMCINAZ said:
No encryption. I am using MAC address filtering. The latency is very very minimal, as tested with pinging. Even if the 300mb is cut in half, it would still be faster than the 100mb. I am playing "devils advocate here" as you can tell.

I can tell you and many others are "old school" about this.

I am just not convinced that, in my exact situation, wired is better or faster.
Click to expand...

oh, wow. no encryption? Are you aware that most bank sites don't encrypt the username and password? I know for certain most games don't. Someone could easily steal all that data, where you're surfing, what you log into, what your usernames and passwords are, etc, by just being nearby. With wireless N, we're talking about 2-3 houses down. Unless you're on a farm with acres of empty land around you, you will likely have issues.

You have no idea how much danger you are in just from stolen data.

Performance is not an issue when your data is flying through the air for anyone to see. It's like strapping booster rockets on a bicycle. Sure, you might go fast, but it will like cause you major harm.
 
Wireless is a HUB architecture.

All clients on your AP must share/schedule radio time (kinda complicated which I wont get into here).

Switches offer dedicated speed (and collision domain) to all hosts.

Wired is always >> wireless.

And to think my builder thought I was **** nuts to demand to have Cat5e pulled all over the house ... his response was "why don't you just get wireless"
 
1. Your "Hard-evidence" showed 100mbit wired throughput beating wireless every time.
2. MAC Filtering is stupid. Your MAC address is sent with every ARP packet, which all ARP can easily be sniffed and then they now have a MAC Address to be spoofed. Not to mention MAC Addresses can be spoofed as easy as it is to get to the Advanced menu on a network adapter in Windows.
3. You will never get 300mbit on a wireless connection, if you do it won't last over 5 seconds a transmission. Too many variables play a role, it will effect you too much.
 
SMCINAZ said:
Nah.
Click to expand...

I'm curious. What's your proof of this statement? Are you using any other form of encryption? I ran an open wireless network for a while, but the only way to get anything on it was to use a VPN that you had to manually dial once the wireless connected.

MAC address filtering, by itself, is trivial to comprimise. So is WEP for that matter.

If you all want my opinion, SMCINAZ is just trolling. Looking at his posts in this thread alone, it would seem that way.
 
just because a marketing division "SAYS" something on a box, does not mean its true. Hello, its marketing :confused:

Wired vs Wireless?

Wired wins in so many ways. It's simple logic if you just think about it. That's if you know both technologies.

Do you think data centers will use a wireless backbone. lmao. no.:rolleyes:
 
SMCINAZ said:
Nah.
Click to expand...

I actually LOL'd when I read your response..... Ignorance ftl:rolleyes:

and btw, everyone is pretty correct in saying that there are far too many variables involved with wireless and throughput speeds to give you an accurate answer. Take whatever benchmarks you read with a grain of salt. Im sure you wont listen to what myself or anyone else has to say anyway.
 
SMCINAZ said:
Nah.
Click to expand...


lol

I think this guy just wanted people to agree with him. Go ahead, use the 300Mbp/s wireless is much better than wired thats why all large companies run all their operations using only wireless and very very little wired.

Good luck, have fun.

Oh and keep up the security, your neighbours will love you for it (as will that guy sitting outside with his laptop, you do know he comes down to your road just to download child porn and torrents on your connection, right?)
 
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