Which will slow our network less: Adding a wired or wirless connection?

We currently have two computers wirelessly accessing a DIR-655 network. We are adding a third computer and have the option to access the network wirelessly or hard wired into the router. Which option will slow down the network the least?

The obvious answer to me is to hard wire the third computer, but I wanted to make sure.

 

What are the maximum up/down speeds for your internet service from your ISP?

 

10 Mbps 768 Kbps

 

hardwired. wireless carries all kind of protocol and negotiation overhead.

 

Agreed. While Wireless devices can interfere with each other; with signals broadcasting everywhere and other 2.4Ghz devices transmitting radio waves etc. Wired devices doesn't suffer from these issues, so my vote is also for Wired in this case.

 

You aren't going to notice a single bit of difference in terms of your internet surfing. You might notice some issues if you have a lot of systems on the network wirelessly and you're slinging tons and tons of data-intense media around within your network wirelessly as well.

Basically, you are unlikely to see anything more than about 9Mbits/sec to 9.5Mbits/sec in download throughput from your ISP (overhead always eats some of that bandwidth up). The DIR-655, when operating in 802.11g mode (i.e., slower than N), has a theoretical rate of 54Mbits/sec, but in actuality, when you measure actual throughput, you're really going to be getting about 18Mbits/sec to about 22Mbits/sec from the router itself.

What that means in practicality, is that for internet usage, you could basically cut your throughput in half and still have enough internal bandwidth in your router and your private subnetwork to more than keep up with what your ISP is going to be feeding you from off the internet.

The bottom line is, it really doesn't matter in this circumstance whether you go wired or wireless; you simply won't see any differences.

 

I'm with shyster....that router will easily support far more wireless computers than three without any real slowdown.

The key here is the question--will it slow down my network, not which is a slower mode of connection.

Network slowdowns result from congestion, collisions, impedance, signal strength..... None of that is going to occur with three computers and a wireless network in a normal home network.

I do agree that the overhead associated with wireless transmissions is a factor in an individual computers connection speed--it does not affect the network as a whole--just the connection between a single computer and the router/switch.

If you want to extrapolate that to the connection between two computers (up and down to the router), again this is a factor of bandwidth utilization, not "network speed"

I fear I am arguing semantics, though. It is difficult to say what the OP is really after.

 

To clarify. I want to know whether the computers accessing the internet from the DIR-655 will notice a slowdown of the internet connection depending on whether I add a wired or wireless connection.

 

Already answered: No, considering your maximum download rate, none of the computers will notice any difference if those computers are connected by wire or wirelessly (unless you plan on having 20 or 30 computers trying to connect wirelessly).

 

What he's essentially asking is what is slower, a wired connection or a wireless connection, for his 3rd system. The short answer is the you're better off going with a Wireless connection, one, because it'll be simpler to 3 of the same type of connection rather than dealing 2 with 2 / 1 of different types. As far as speed goes, wireless is radio, and radio moves at lightspeed. Wired connections are limited by cable size & length from the Router to the system, and 'trons can only move so fast through a conductor. While Radio can be affected by interference and other factors, so too can a mouse chewing on an Ethernet cable run inside a wall, or corrosion of the connector. Hi-speed wired systems aren't found in the typical home LAN - they're for business, governments, military and other such uses. Always remember that there's a big difference between RATED speed and ACTUAL speed, be it Ethernet or Wireless.

Wireless is primarily limited by the network device and signal strength within the overall LAN, and even then you can get pretty good speeds, depending on the Router type and Wireless standard. There are many other factors of course, that affect both Ethernet and Wireless. But, if wired connections were faster, we'd still be relying on the telegraph and wired phones for our primary means of communications. Marconi and Farnsworth made Bell look slow, because he was.

Here's a list of the average Ehternet speeds from Ezlan.net: (Mb=Megbits, MB is Megabytes)

Wired 10Mb/sec. Yields 6-8Mb/sec. (.7 - 1MB/sec.)

Wired 100Mb/sec. Yields 60-80Mb/sec. (7-10MB/sec.)

Wired 1000Mb/sec. See here: Giga and Peer to Peer Small Networks


Current 802.11 Wireless Standard speeds (Source: Wiki)

802.11b 11.0 Mbit/s 1.375 MB/s

802.11g OFDM 0.125 54.0 Mbit/s 6.75 MB/s

802.11g with Super G 108.0 Mbit/s 13.5 MB/s

802.11g with Nitro 140.0 Mbit/s 17.5 MB/s

802.11n 600.0 Mbit/s Max 75 MB/s Max

Unless you've got the need or can justify the expense of a hi-speed wired system, wireless is a much better system for home LAN's, providing that signal and distance from Router to system adapter isn't a connection factor.

In the end though, Shyster's correct - it doesn't make enough difference that you're going to see anyway, because the real problems with speed aren't with the typical LAN. It's once your signal gets outside of your LAN that speed becomes an issue. Traffic bottlenecks caused by geographic location, time of day, ISP network configuration and architecture, bandwidth throttling, and other things put in place by ISP's can significantly slow down your speed once your signal gets past your Router. Even the length of your cable from your residence to the street connection and the number of cable boxes on your network can lower your signal to the point where it begins to affect your connection, and in those cases it doesn't make a difference if you're using Ethernet or Wireless.

Your network setup isn't the only thing that affects your speed either. Disk fragmentation can cause network slowdowns, as well as system resource issues caused by the constant drop in available RAM in every system before it's rebooted. Security programs for viruses, malware, adware, port scanning, can have an effect on network speed. Firewalls, even encrypted security like WPA, can affect your speed, especially when it comes to N standard devices.
Network speed isn't about just wired or wireless - there are so many things that have a cumulative effect on your overall speed that the differences between Ethernet and Wireless aren't the biggest factors.

How many systems / devices are connected to your LAN, and how many people are vying for Router/Internet access at any given time can also affect your speed. And as I've said many, many times here on NBR and on this thread, just a wrong setting mismatch between your Router and Wireless or Ethernet Adapter can have a major effect on your speed, which few people ever take into account. Most people just plug in their Router, run the setup program, then expect it to give them the highest possible rated speeds, which is sheer fantasy. Computers and network devices are complex electronic systems and not appliances, like most people tend to treat them, though they are like a blender in point of fact.

Like a blender, if you add the wrong ingredients, or the wrong proportions of ingredients, you'll get crap for an output.

 

When computers on my network are using more bandwidth it slows down everything. Of course, that's just because my internet is bloody slow 1.5mbps/256kbps and has nothing to do with my 2-wired desktops and wireless laptop.

 

This is the issue here. We have 3 computers that will access the internet though the router at various times during the day.

I assume that the answer then is to use a wired connection.

 

It won't change anything. If you have a 10mbps connection, you can't have 10mbps on the 3 computers at once. The router will scale to give appropriate share of the connection to every computers, not matter they are wired or not. The only thing to check is if you are P2Ping, the upload speed. If one computer is monopolizing the upload speed, chances are the connection will screw a bit on the other computers.

 

The answer is, it doesn't matter. Your network, whether it is wireless G/N or Wired 100/1000Mbps isn't going to slow down your network as a whole. They're all fast enough to handle everything you throw at it. Unless you're constantly transfering files through the LAN, you won't notice a signle bit of difference.

 

LOL. What the heck is that huge cut and paste post up there?

Basically, modern networks will be more than capable of handling either three computers wirelessly or three computers wired.

 

Just thought I'd chime in a note in agreeance with the wired configuration for LAN usage... however in regards to your broadband experience, that is dependant on the quality of the router, regardless of whether it is wired or wireless.

The short version on the differences in data transferrance: Ethernet carries 8 seperate wires, of which 4 are utilized in a wired ethernet data connection. 2 of those wires are used for data-UP, and 2 are used for data-DOWN, and both pairs on, for instance, a 10mbps network, can transmit at 10mbps. Meaning you actually have a 20mbps connection to the network. In wireless the situation changes, you essentially only have 1 "wire" ... so although the router is capable of transmitting at 54mbps, you're actually only getting an ideal 27mbps up and 27 down.

And there's a lot of extra packets involved in wireless, regardless, as previously mentioned.

In addition to the other benefits of a wired connection, I will have to actually call JCMS out in regards to the 10mbps/computer bit. If your BANDWIDTH (broadband connection) is limited to 10mbps, then, naturally, that is all you will able to achieve on the network in regards to information coming down the pipe from the broadband connection. However, depending on the router, you will typically find that more than 3 or 4 devices can transfer at the maximum bitrate on a LAN (i.e. copying files from one networked device to another). This is primarily dependant on the quality of the backbone installed on the router, but even the cheapo 10mbps switches have ~80mbps backbones.

The primary question the OP needs to ask is whether or not you will need that speed in the local network. Even an 802.11b wireless connection with a solid signal will not be slower than the majority of broadband connections.