144Mbps more like 12Mbps

[christhedonstar]

Hi,

I have a Dell laptop with N wireless card in. I have a belkin draft n wifi router (belkin). I have qnap raid nas wired into the router via cat 5 cable.

My laptop says it has got a 144Mps connection but when I try to copy a file from the laptop to the nas it does it at about 12Mbps (~1.5 megabytes a sec). When I wire the laptop with cat 5 cable it gets around 91Mbps (i.e around 9 megabytes). Why is wireless so slow for copying files?? (The latop is approximately 50 cm away from the router. )

Cheers,

Chris

 

[HungryHouse]

There are so many factors that go into a file transfer, its well beyond simply the wireless transmission speed.

Wireless, as it is, is a shared medium and contends for bandwith with other clients, however, that's just the beginning of the story. One must consider environmental factors - interference, absorption, reflection etc.

Then on to the juicier stuff...your machines have multiple processes running, and with tcp windowing, error correction, and detection, checksums, and the like, ftp's and such type connections slow down even further.

Your actual transmission speed will always be a lot lower than what your "connect" speed show as.
If you are truly getting 12Mbps on a file transfer, you should very happy, as that's excellent for one wireless node!

Real trouble call:
Customer: "I have a huge problem. A friend has put a screensaver on my computer, but every time I move the mouse, it disappears!"

 

[iolair]

How far away from the router/access point is your laptop? Also, is there anything that could cause any interference - like a cordless telephone, microwave, television, etc.?

Iolair MacWalter
Network Engineer

 

[christhedonstar]

I changed to channel 13 and get around 24Mbps.