Laptop WiFi question

[JunkBear]

Hi.

My internal single antenna wifi of my Inspiron N5030 goes to 65 Mbits/s and my usb wifi dongle goes to 72 Mbits/s.

Currently they are both connected so are they both working at same time on WiFi or only my dongle cause the light of activity is flashing on my dongle?

Thanx

 

[newtekie1]

Open task manager and see. But generally only one will be used.

 

[JunkBear]

After opening both of them are connected.

 

[Mussels]

After opening both of them are connected.

both can be connected, but traffic will only flow over one of them.

 

[JunkBear]

So its the usb dongle who works

 

[Mussels]

So its the usb dongle who works

only you can tell us which one is active at any given time.

 

[ShiBDiB]

Confused what you're looking for... Windows is only capable (for all intents and purposes) of actively using one incoming connection. It will still attempt to use all adapters it has available but only one will be active and actually doing anything.

It sounds like they both work fine it's just your PC defaulting to plug and play hardware over the onboard stuff.

 

[JunkBear]

Ok. So when my single antenna internal wifi is in sending mode does it automatically activate the Receiving mode on usb dongle to alwayw have sending-reveiving active at same time?

 

[Mussels]

Ok. So when my single antenna internal wifi is in sending mode does it automatically activate the Receiving mode on usb dongle to alwayw have sending-reveiving active at same time?

no

 

[JunkBear]

Thank you all my questions have been answered

 

[Aquinus]

Routing tables can be helpful for this kind of thing. IIRC, the first route that matches is the one that is used, therefore if there are more than one route, the first encountered is the one that will be used. Fancy stuff has to be done to send traffic on one and recieve on the other which would require a powerful (Linux) gateway to do the appropriate NATing to make such a thing work. The application has to support it as well, so it's two ends that need to support such a thing.

>netstat -rn
===========================================================================
Interface List
16...c0 c1 c0 5b ca b9 ......Broadcom 802.11n Wireless USB Adapter
15...c8 60 00 06 b7 8e ......Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
14...00 08 ca 28 06 95 ......Atheros AR9002WB-1NG Wireless Network Adapter
  1...........................Software Loopback Interface 1
13...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
26...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
27...00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e0 Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #3
===========================================================================

IPv4 Route Table
===========================================================================
Active Routes:
Network Destination        Netmask          Gateway       Interface  Metric
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0     10.10.10.254     10.10.10.137     25
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0     10.10.10.254     10.10.10.122     20
       10.10.10.0    255.255.255.0         On-link      10.10.10.137    281
       10.10.10.0    255.255.255.0         On-link      10.10.10.122    276
     10.10.10.122  255.255.255.255         On-link      10.10.10.122    276
     10.10.10.137  255.255.255.255         On-link      10.10.10.137    281
     10.10.10.255  255.255.255.255         On-link      10.10.10.137    281
     10.10.10.255  255.255.255.255         On-link      10.10.10.122    276
        127.0.0.0        255.0.0.0         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
        127.0.0.1  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
  127.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0         On-link      10.10.10.137    281
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0         On-link      10.10.10.122    276
  255.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link         127.0.0.1    306
  255.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link      10.10.10.137    281
  255.255.255.255  255.255.255.255         On-link      10.10.10.122    276
===========================================================================
Persistent Routes:
  Network Address          Netmask  Gateway Address  Metric
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0     10.10.10.254  Default
===========================================================================

IPv6 Route Table
===========================================================================
Active Routes:
If Metric Network Destination      Gateway
  1    306 ::1/128                  On-link
14    281 fe80::/64                On-link
16    276 fe80::/64                On-link
16    276 fe80::5dc3:1b17:2e3a:4c08/128
                                    On-link
14    281 fe80::c458:dce1:3e64:8c2e/128
                                    On-link
  1    306 ff00::/8                 On-link
14    281 ff00::/8                 On-link
16    276 ff00::/8                 On-link
===========================================================================
Persistent Routes:
  None

 

[Caring1]

In my experience, if you are referring to a 3G dongle, then the software from that takes preference and overides the onboard wireless connection. The wireless can still be enabled but won't connect if the 3G is connected.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Windows is only capable (for all intents and purposes) of actively using one incoming connection.

Ummm, just to clarity, that is not exactly true. One PC can be connected to multiple networks at the same time through multiple connections (more than one Ethernet card and/or wifi adapters) and Windows is fully capable of using all the incoming and outgoing connections at once. But I stress, this is to "multiple networks". Not a single network.

If you are attempting to use two network adapters to connect to the same network, then I agree completely with ShiBDiB, and "for all intents and purposes", Windows won't like this.

There are exceptions, however. If you have multiple gateways on the same network, you can configure multiple network adapters for each gateway. See Configuring multiple gateways on a network.

Since it appears you are connecting to a single wifi network, I recommend you disable one device, if only for no other reason than because Windows is wasting resources (CPU cycles and RAM) on the 2nd adapter.

 

[ShiBDiB]

Ummm, just to clarity, that is not exactly true. One PC can be connected to multiple networks at the same time through multiple connections (more than one Ethernet card and/or wifi adapters) and Windows is fully capable of using all the incoming and outgoing connections at once. But I stress, this is to "multiple networks". Not a single network.

If you are attempting to use two network adapters to connect to the same network, then I agree completely with ShiBDiB, and "for all intents and purposes", Windows won't like this.

There are exceptions, however. If you have multiple gateways on the same network, you can configure multiple network adapters for each gateway. See Configuring multiple gateways on a network.

Since it appears you are connecting to a single wifi network, I recommend you disable one device, if only for no other reason than because Windows is wasting resources (CPU cycles and RAM) on the 2nd adapter.

You're correct I was a few beers in and it was like 6am.. It can only use one component per network.

 

[Bill_Bright]

It can only use one component per network.

Again, assuming this not an example of the exception I noted and there is only one gateway device on this network. And for sure, having more than one gateway on a home network would be quite unusual. But not unheard of. For example, for repair shops in homes, it is not uncommon to use two routers to isolate the shop network from the home network. I did this myself to ensure potentially infected computers I was working on had no way of accessing my home network. But I could access both networks from my own computer.

 

[ShiBDiB]

Again, assuming this not an example of the exception I noted and there is only one gateway device on this network. And for sure, having more than one gateway on a home network would be quite unusual. But not unheard of. For example, for repair shops in homes, it is not uncommon to use two routers to isolate the shop network from the home network. I did this myself to ensure potentially infected computers I was working on had no way of accessing my home network. But I could access both networks from my own computer.

Than that's 2 networks(Whether the 2 networks comes from the same router or not doesn't matter) working thru 1 gateway(your "modem" or whatever the ISP provided).

Assuming the semantics of a gateway =/= router

But back on topic now

 

[Bill_Bright]

The gateway can be, and often is the modem, not the router. Or a modem and a router for 2 gateways. An example would be one NIC is used to access the Intranet and the other NIC the Internet.

But again, that's not typical for home networks.