[vox-tech] wireless networking

[Ryan]

On Saturday 30 December 2006 09:33 pm, Mark K. Kim lugod3MAPS-at-cbreak.org 
|lugod| wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 30, 2006 at 10:59:37PM -0500, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> > Is there such a thing as a consumer wireless network card that reaches
> > wired ethernet speed?
>
> There are several types of standards but these are probably the ones
> you're interested in:
>
> Wired ethernet LAN speeds: 10baseT is 10Mbps max.  100baseT is 100Mbps
> max.  1000baseT, now quite affordable, is 1000Mbps max.

Wired netowrks have very low overhead, typicly single digit percentages.

> Wireless LAN speeds: 802.11b can reach 11Mbps max.  802.11g can reach
> 54Mbps max.  802.11n can reach 540Mbps max.
>
> There is more noise on wireless connections so the "max" on wireless is
> not as "max" as the "max" on the wired connections =P  802.11b feels
> a lot like 5Mbps to me most of the time.

WiFi has overhead of around 100%, and rates quoted are always the gross data 
rate including all overhead.

802.11n isn't a standard yet.  Standards based 802.11g kit gets around 20 to 
25 Mbps  

Also note that WiFi is half duplex and shared media; only one station can 
successfully transmit at once.  Even worse, in managed mode (at least, with 
stardards complaint gear), client stations must communicate amongst each 
other through the Access Point; resulting in major speed decreases.

There are a lot of things WiFi is good at, but being fast is not one of them.

-- 
Ryan Castellucci - http://ryanc.org/
GPG Key: http://ryanc.org/files/publickey.asc