WIFI slower than wired?

[jayno20]

at work my laptop will get about 14000 kbps download and the wired machines get around 26000 kbps... should there be such a huge gap in performance? if not how can i fix it or at least help it out some..?

 

[DelJo63]

yes, WiFi is slower than wired, especially when encrypted; BUT PLEASE use
at least WEP -- better to use WPA/WPA2

your best choice is going G mode, but stay away from -N devices as there is
NO STANDARD approved and you become locked on both ends to a specific vender

 

[jayno20]

It is G as of right now...

 

[Justin]

Actually, only junk wireless cards do not support hardware encryption. As in, piece of crap broadcom cards that come in cheaper laptops.


Most quality cards, especially anything Atheros based, does all encryption in hardware - so you lose no performance at all using WEP or WPA with AES or anything.

And for the most part, yes, a wireless connection is not going to perform the same as a wired connection.

 

[jayno20]

Well i have an Intel 3945 card. Should the gap be that big in performance tho?

 

[Justin]

Yes, it should. On a typical wireless network, you can expect to get around one-half of your synced speed in actual transmit. So if you are synced at 24mbps, you can expect to get a maximum of around 12mbps out of it. That is not a perfect rule, but for a standard G network in an office setting that is around what you can plan on.

There are numerous issues with standard wireless networks, which include but are not limited too transmitted signal level, return signal level, interference at the AP, interference at the client, multipath (self) interference, fade margin, receive sensitivity at both AP and client and a horde of others.