Slow download rate with wireless...

tomwalker · 29 Jun 2007 at 16:48

When I've got my pc connected to the network via my USB netgear wireless dongle I can only seem to sustain download rates at between 800-900kbps although when I start the download I get about 1700kbps. After a couple of minutes it then slows down to about half.

However when its connected up via ethernet I get the top speed constantly with no slowdown.

Now is this due to the USB interface and would I able to get rid of this problem with an internal PCI wireless card?

P.S The wireless connection has an excellant signal and connects at 54mbps.

OzZie · 29 Jun 2007 at 19:54

What are you syncing at? If its over 12Mbit/s then USB could be limiting you iirc.

tomwalker · 29 Jun 2007 at 20:37

OzZie said:
What are you syncing at? If its over 12Mbit/s then USB could be limiting you iirc.

Yeh my sync rate is 15334 so it probably is being limited but judging by the speed I get it looks to be limited to about 8-9MBit/s. Would I be able to download at full speed if I were to get a PCI wireless card or is it best to get one of those homeplugs?

Snapshot · 30 Jun 2007 at 07:19

The USB will only be the limiting factor if it's USB1 at 11Mb/s. USB2 is over 400Mb/s so there's no way that will slow 54Mb/s wireless. It could well be the wireless itself. The rated speed may be 54Mb/s but that's the combined speed for both directions - a complete marketing con. It's also very inefficient so you're lucky to get even half of the actual speed. So, you're looking at a quarter of 54Mb/s which is 13.5Mbs. Oh look, we're down below your sync speed of ~15Mb/s....

Something else that just occurred to me is that it might be due to insufficient disk space or excessive fragmentaion where you're trying to store the downloads.

wij · 30 Jun 2007 at 14:40

If you do go for a homeplug solution you might want to also consider that they don't work at their rated speeds either

I have a pair of 200mbit rated solwise ones that give me about 45mbit/sec average throughput, although that is far more than I was able to get from WiFi and also much more reliable.