[vox-tech] wireless networking

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Sun 31 Dec 06,  3:44 AM, Ryan <cjg5ehir02 at sneakemail.com> said:
> 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.

Thanks Mark and Ryan.

Thanks for the replies.  I suspected that was the case.  However, I didn't
realize that Gigabit was so cheap.  I think I'll upgrade to that.  :)

Pete