Wired or Wireless which is Fastest?

[mocman]

I have dsl coming from their modem to a belkin wireless router. I have my xbox 360 hooked up wired and my macbook and Imac 24" hooked up via their airports.
I have read alot that the wired option is the most reliable and alot quicker in the speed dept. Is this true or not?? Thanks MC

 

[screensaver400]

Using equipment that can be purchased today, and in the last 5 or 10 years, wired is always faster.

The fastest completed wireless standard is 54mbps (802.11g). The fastest common wired is 100mbps, and 1000mbps is becoming more and more common.

However, a long time ago there was 10mbps ethernet. In that case, modern wireless would have been faster. So if you have a 10 year old router without 100mbps ethernet and a separate wireless access point, theoretically the wireless could be faster. But I doubt there's a single person on the planet with this set-up.

 

[grapes911]

Both wireless and wired is probably faster than your internet connection. So it really won't matter since neither will be a bottleneck.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

well for Internet, it does not really matter. The wireless transmission rate of wireless B is still faster than most broad band these days.

The fastest most people have in broadband is 5Mbit and wireless b goes at 11Mbit. So in the end it does not really matter if you are going for Internet use of it.

Now for transferring files between computers wired is still faster and always will be.

 

[mocman]

I fugured that and I will hook my Imac back to the belkin router wired tomorrow. It is the g + one and then I will only have my macbook hooked up via wireless. It is only about a month old. I have bellsouth 6.0 but who knows if it is that fast. I figured the wired would be faster and more reliable also.....I will wait until the n is up and running then it will be fast enough to do media etc..........

 

[patrick0brien]

Good rule of thumb that will likely stay accurate for a long time:

If wired is an option, do it.

 

[emw]

Quicker? Potentially, even for internet connections, since wireless is more prone to issues such as reception degradation due to distance from the router or interference from other devices.

Most reliable? Again, potentially, depending on your environment.

However, in most internet usage cases, wireless and wired are comparable technologies and you should base your decision a little bit on which makes more sense with how your devices are located. If you iMac can easily be connected via a wired ethernet connection, then do it. But laptops are generally to be carried about, so wireless is probably your best option there.

 

[redmeister]

wired merely because of reception issues with wireless limiting your full potential connection

 

[el greenerino]

Good rule of thumb that will likely stay accurate for a long time:

If wired is an option, do it.

Yes, a wired connection won't be interfered with by a microwave or cordless phone. Although DSL won't test the throughput of your router (theoretically), there will also be lag.

Anyone who has tried to sync audio and video over an Airport Express can atest to lag.

 

[cblackburn]

Both wireless and wired is probably faster than your internet connection. So it really won't matter since neither will be a bottleneck.

Absolutely not!

Bandwidth is not the only factor to consider in this. If he has the XBOX 360 hooked up over the wireless then one must assume that he is going to use XBOX Live with Audio chat. This means that there will be VoIP like traffic coming from the XBOX over wireless.

This is fine when there is only traffic from the XBOX but it all falls apart when there is traffic from the iMac. This is becuase two wireless nodes on a network do not communicate directly between each other and hence there is no way to know if another person is transmitting at any one time, especially since both of the nodes could be in range of the AP but out of reach of each other. Therefore WiFi uses CSMA/CC (Carrier sense multiple access with collision detection). When the XBOX tries to transmit a VoIP packet at the same time as the iMac wants to get a web page evrything on the network has to stop transmitting for some miliseconds and then try again.

This collision drasticly affects lag in the game and can fracture and ruin VoIP performance.

On a switched wired network however each node on the network can transmit and recieve in full duplex without any limitation, the scheduling of the packets is handled by the switch.

If you can wire it, WIRE IT

Chris

 

[grapes911]

Absolutely not!

Bandwidth is not the only factor to consider in this. If he has the XBOX 360 hooked up over the wireless then one must assume that he is going to use XBOX Live with Audio chat. This means that there will be VoIP like traffic coming from the XBOX over wireless.

This is fine when there is only traffic from the XBOX but it all falls apart when there is traffic from the iMac. This is becuase two wireless nodes on a network do not communicate directly between each other and hence there is no way to know if another person is transmitting at any one time, especially since both of the nodes could be in range of the AP but out of reach of each other. Therefore WiFi uses CSMA/CC (Carrier sense multiple access with collision detection). When the XBOX tries to transmit a VoIP packet at the same time as the iMac wants to get a web page evrything on the network has to stop transmitting for some miliseconds and then try again.

This collision drasticly affects lag in the game and can fracture and ruin VoIP performance.

On a switched wired network however each node on the network can transmit and recieve in full duplex without any limitation, the scheduling of the packets is handled by the switch.

If you can wire it, WIRE IT

Chris

But CSMA/CA should be able to handle it. Its not as good as CSMA/CD, but it should hold it's own with a limited number of computers. Yes will will be a little slower and less responsive than the wired router, but I still believe that the internet will be the bottleneck and users of the router will not see a difference. And heck, many wired routers use CSMA/CA because it cheaper to implement. As for your last statement, I wire everything I can mostly because it's cheaper, but I do not believe that it will be faster when accessing the internet.

 

[cblackburn]

Well, I can definatley testify to the fact that it does not work very well

Because of this we have an interesting problem, too much wireless signal... To get the throughput and reliability we needed to effectively build a cellular network of WiFi access points so that, ideally no more than 3 or 4 units connected to one access point, but to do that the signal boundries overlap and cause interferance of their own

Chris

 

[grapes911]

I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but I have read a lot regarding networking and everything I've read suggests the opposite of what you say. Do you have any stats, benchmarks, or reliable sources to back up your claims?

 

[cblackburn]

I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but I have read a lot regarding networking and everything I've read suggests the opposite of what you say. Do you have any stats, benchmarks, or reliable sources to back up your claims?

I don't have any research to hand, only my personal experience. In my experience any WAP with more than about 10 nodes on it is practically impossible to use for anything other than low bandwidth non time critical applications.

Chris

 

[grapes911]

I don't have any research to hand, only my personal experience. In my experience any WAP with more than about 10 nodes on it is practically impossible to use for anything other than low bandwidth non time critical applications.

Chris

1. Are you talking about using a cheap router? Because I do believe than a cheap router may slow down after 10 connections. At my old job we ran 10-30 computers (varied from time-to-time) off a wireless router. The router was a business model. We never had a problem with intranet, but internet some times slowed a little.

2. How can you compare 10 connections with the OP wanting to connected a iMac, MB, and xbox? It's not even a fair comparison.