What is the point of N wireless without gigabit lan ports grrr

[mcloughj]

Just need to vent my spleen about this... what use is 300mbps wireless networking if all the devices connected are running at 100mbs?

I just bought a netgear router (wnr2000) and it made no mention of the lan port settings and lo and behold when i connect everything up I can still only copy files to my nas at 5-6 Mb/s

grrr.

that'll learn me to be taken in by price and not throughly check the web for reviews first...

 

[Kreij]

If your NAS device has a high speed USB (2.0) port, you could get a wireless N USB network adapter and talk to the wireless portion of your router instead of using the LAN ports.

 

[newtekie1]

It is just like Gigabit, they expect you to ues everything with Wireless N, so everything is running at 300Mbps. Not that wireless N ever actually sees those speed... Wireless N rarely ever sees over 50Mb/s...which is right about what you are getting.

Basically, file transfer speeds will always be limitted by the wireless, even in a 100Mb/s network with 300Mb/s wireless N. Wireless N transfer speeds suck.

Basically in the real world you are looking at transfer speeds as follows:

Wireless G: ~16Mb/s(~2MB/s)
Wireless N: ~48Mb/s(~6MB/s)
Wired 100: ~80Mb/s(~10MB/s)
Wired 1000: ~800Mb/s(~100MB/s)

 

[mcloughj]

If your NAS device has a high speed USB (2.0) port, you could get a wireless N USB network adapter and talk to the wireless portion of your router instead of using the LAN ports.

That would be an interesting little experiment....

but newtechie's post kinda puts the breaks on it! humm... I should move house and hard wire the whole place up before i move it.

 

[francis511]

Actually I agree that routers have very misleading specs. I bought a new one last year and you really have to read the small print. Only a few routers use gigabit + wireless-n and if you add a modem to that , you`re nearly out of luck and paying thru the nose !

 

[lemonadesoda]

Er,

1./ n will give you much more range. I noticed on my new netbook I can see many more networks than I could on my older g card

2./ CONTENTION! Remember that wireless protocol, data is sent in bursts. Any interference, or two users using the same router or channel, will collide and they need to resend. n makes a huge improvement when there are multiple users. They can squeeze the data in and out and n deals with errors and contention much much better

3./ Check out newteckies "real world" speeds. They are pretty spot on with my experience. I have always been HUGELY disappointed by a wireless g bridge I run between two buildings maxining out at about 15Mb/s= 2MB/s... and just wish there were pro-rated n bridges available at an affordable price. Unfortunately they are all $500 a shot :-(

 

[thebluebumblebee]

mcloughj, I'd be pissed if I were you too. Nowhere on their documentation do they mention what the speed is of the wired LAN ports. I'm assuming that's what you're referring to when you say "LAN ports".
What you got stung with is that some "N" routers are 100Mb and some are gigabit. If your "N" router was based on a gigabit router, you'd see transfer speeds toward 100MB/s. This, of course, costs money. I will most likely never buy Netgear again. I have a FR114p which has great features, one of which is a hardware firewall. I was real happy with it until I read a review at http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/ that stated that the speed on the WAN was limited to 1.5Mb/s! Grrrrrr.
What you want is a Wireless N gigabit router. What you could do is get a gigabit switch to connect your wired items to and connect it to the wireless router for WAN and wireless access. May I recommend the D-Link DGS-2208.

 

[Kreij]

My first communication device was a 300bps modem. I was thrilled when the 1200s came out. The 2400s were like a dream come true. My first foray into "high speed" communications was when the company that I worked for bought proprietary modems that talked to each other at 19.2Kbs. We could send a 100kb file in about 10 seconds.
We only used telnet for transfers and I remember talking excitedly with co-workers about the first version of Mozilla.
Thus the reason you see me posting as "Old Uncle Kreij".

Things have gotten better. Quit whining.

Okay that was tongue-in-cheek. You can get the most out of your network with a little work, just don't expect to see the throughput they claim as that only happens in labs under optimal (read: not real world) conditions.

 

[newtekie1]

If your "N" router was based on a gigabit router, you'd see transfer speeds toward 100MB/s.

No, he wouldn't, not even close to 100MB/s. First of all, in perfect conditions, the theoretical max for Wireless N is only 37.5MB/s, you are never going to see 100MB/s over Wireless N, it is impossible.

He is getting 5-6MB/s, or about 48Mb/s. 100M LAN ports will give about 80Mb/s(or 10MB/s) in real world use. So his problem is not the LAN port, the 100M LAN port is good for at least double the speeds he is getting. The problem is somewhere else, either the NAS isn't able to provide data any faster(unlikely) or the Wireless N isn't able to transfer any faster(likely). Either way, the problem isn't the 100M LAN ports, and going to 1000M will not improve anything.

Actually I agree that routers have very misleading specs. I bought a new one last year and you really have to read the small print. Only a few routers use gigabit + wireless-n and if you add a modem to that , you`re nearly out of luck and paying thru the nose !

This is one of the reasons why buying combo devices isn't ideal. All of my network devices run at 1000M, despite my router only being 100M. A gigabit switch(or 2) connecting all the devices, and a dedicated Wireless N access point also connected via Gigabit to one of the switches or even directly to the router at 100M since 100M is faster than Wireless N is the way to go.

In my setup, the only time traffic ever hits the 100M network segment is when it is internet traffic, and the internet is the bottleneck there, so it doesn't matter that it is only 100M.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

I'm talking about WIRED connections.

 

[newtekie1]

Ok, but how does that apply to his transfers over wireless? That is what we are talking about here.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

I think he's talking about the wired connections when he said: "and it made no mention of the lan port settings". If you go to Netgear's site for this product, it make no mention what so ever of the performance of the wired LAN ports. None. Nada. We are both making assumptions, so, we'll have to wait till he replies, which might be tomorrow since it's 10:30PM in Dublin.

 

[human_error]

If you want better speeds between devices without rewiring your house then give powerline ethernet a try - i have a 200Mb kit and that transfers files a lot faster than my N wireless ever did.

My problem with wireless N is the same as that has already been said here - good connection distances but rubbish transfer speeds.

 

[mcloughj]

Sorry folks, should have been clearer... I am talking about a transfers from a wired nas with a gigabit port to my main pc with it's 300mbs pic-e wireless card.

I was hoping to use the NAS as a regular backup for the computer but with 5-6MB/s transfers there's not much point. Another idea was to place my firefox profile on it so that my bookmarks and such would be in sync if I used multiple computers but if would be irritating to use at those kinds of speeds.

It's interesting to see that the limitation is actually the wireless not the hamstrung 100mbs connection that the NAS is limited to using with the router.

I guess if i want decent speeds I'll buy a gigabit router and wire up my house!

 

[mcloughj]

If you want better speeds between devices without rewiring your house then give powerline ethernet a try - i have a 200Mb kit and that transfers files a lot faster than my N wireless ever did.

My problem with wireless N is the same as that has already been said here - good connection distances but rubbish transfer speeds.

I have looked at powerline stuff but the cost is a bit on the high side. and i know when i take the plunge eve faster kit would be released the following day!