Wireless Networking Help

[mongers]

So I've just set up a wireless network on my new netbook, it's replacing my elderly laptop thats now beginning to smell like its burning !

Now the router is an old d-link thing with g protocol, where as the netbook goes upto n. I've got them talking, but the network options on the netbook didn't make much sense, in the end I got WPA-PSK working, whatever that is, so my question is what speed should I expect to see ?

I've been downloading some legal audio books and I'm getting about 1 MB about every 4 seconds, does this sound about right for wireless transfer ?

[DontSayBanana]

It depends on whether you're talking about peer-to-peer transfer or Internet-to-device transfer.  Your Internet transfers will be much slower; the communication is limited by the Wireless-G device to 54Mbps, which is further limited by whatever bandwidth your ISP provides; in my case, it's limited to 25.46Mbps to the computer with a download cap of 4.24Mbps.

Wireless-N has a theoretical limit of 300Mbps, but there are so many catches that you'll never see that kind of speed, and even if you did, it would only be between devices on your own network (e.g. streaming from a media box or copying files from one computer to another).

It really sounds like you're capped more by lowish bandwidth from the ISP.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Sounds too low. With the speeds provided by your typical UK provider I haven't noticed much difference between wired-up and wireless, both are around 8mbps.

[Vricklund]

Also there's the throughput of your router to consider. Very few manufacturers supply this information readily so you'll have to google it. Cheap low end routers simply can't shuffle enough bits to keep up with a modern connection.