wireless-G throughput

What kind of realistic throughput should I expect on a wireless-G network? I just got a new desktop and in copying files over from my laptop I'm only getting a 700 Kbytes/second transfer rate. I checked the adapters on both ends and both report operating at 54 Mbits/second. I know that nobody ever achieves the theoretical maximum but 700K is only about a tenth of this. I thought maybe I'd get a quarter or even a half.

I've had this Linksys WRT54G router for a while but until I got the desktop all it was doing was transmitting 300K DSL to my laptop, so I never noticed the throughput issue until now.

I posted this question over at CNet but didn't get much of a response, so I thought I 'd try here. Yes, there are any number of alternatives I could pursue to copy files over faster, but if something's wrong with my network configuration I'd like to fix it.

 

FTP will yield better results in the 1.5MB/sec. SMB overhead is real large.

A program called NetworkActivity Port Scanner can be used to check what ports are being open.

To scan from the outside try this http://www.hashemian.com/tools/port-scanner.php

Here is a link to test FTP with http://www.g6ftpserver.com/en/ftptest

 

The problem is with TWO wireless connections on a same router. Try copying on a wirelessly connected notebook from a notebook connected by cable on a router and the speed will be much higher (I'd expect anything between 1-2MB/s).

See if it works better.

Ivan

 

I don't understand. What is a wireless network if not two (or more) wireless connections to the same router. Of course plugging in a cable on one side is faster; half the journey is on 802.11G, the other on 100BaseT instead of G all the way. But G should still be G, right?

 

I consider wireless network even with one comp connected to a router. The fact is that number of wireless clients will slowthe wireless performance down . All G clients will work at lower speeds (despite the 54MBit connection), but even worse - only one B client (11Mbit/s) will dramatically slowdown whole network (even G connections).

The second thing is that router will buffer traffic for each client, decide where to send and then send it. Receive and send cannot happen at the same time. Buffering and routing will also take more time. Add here encryption (WPA for example) and you will get 1MB/s - 1,5MB/s at most between two wirelessly connected notebooks communicating with each other. A lot of smaller files will dramatically lower the speed. If you copy a lot, try to zip all small files in a big file and then send it. You don't need to actually compress it - just put it in a big zip with no compression or low compression.

If you believe 700 kB/s is too slow anyway - check router settings like turbo mode (optimized ACK packet handling), change channel to 1, 6 or 11 (non overlapping channels), decrease encryption from WPA2 to WPA for example, or simply try putting both notebooks closer to the router and see what happens.

I hope this helps,

Ivan