Usb v Nic

paul&nat

Hi a friend has just had 2meg telewest installed but didnt have a nic card so it is connected through USB.

Will this make a big diffrence in speed transfer ??? I noticed the highest hes getting is about 50 but my step dad has the same 2mg going throu a nic and gets anything up to 120


Ta

jakemuk

i would suggest swapping to a nic

cheapest place on high street is dixons £1.64 i beleive pcline version

i always pick mine up there cheaper then pc shops or online

jakemuk

also you should be getting double those speeds im currently on a

interjak310 router, (no home router)

and getting 120 throughput and thats only on a thus 1mb dsl connection

so you should be seeing 240 max id say

paul&nat

even on usb i should be getting that jakemuk ???

jakemuk

well yeah if you have a 2mb connection

you should be hitting early 200's 220's

but it depends where your downloading from depends how much the other end can output ie how much bandwidth the server has,

are we talkign downloading ie emule bittorrent kazaa etc ? or from a site ?

paul&nat

yeah on torrent jake, ill tell him to get an nic, or it maybe alot of other cable user in his area ?

jakemuk

well torrents arent gauranteed m8,

they work by how much data is seeded by other users alot of users dont allow an upload or if they do very minimal,

for instance

your downloading a game

there 10 people seeding at 5k each

you will get around 50k

maybe you should get him to do a speedtest at adslguide.org to see what his true speed is, ie downloading a file from a website,

A nic is better alround anyway more stable and nothing dangling out usb port, and for around £1.50 form dixons its worthwhile upgrade

jakemuk

tell him to download this for a few minutes (approx 10) and see speed he hits and then he can cancel it

ftp://ftp.blueyonder.co.uk/store2/debian-iso/3.1_r0a/i386/iso-cd/

should top out his connection

mhendo

You should be fine on a 2Mbps connection using a USB connection. Standard USB has a transfer rate of 12Mbps. So plenty for your 2Mbps connection (ie the USB connection shouldn;t be causing a bottle-neck).

If you have a USB 2.0 Hi-Speed USB port, and your modem/router supports this, it can handle up to 480Mbps.

I have used a standard USB modem on an 8Mbps connection before, and achieved the full 8Mbps download speed.

jakemuk

lol how can a router provide 480mbps

and everyone knows a nic is better then usb

mhendo

I didn't say the router did...just pointing out that a USB 1.1 or 2 connection can't be the reason for not achieving even half the bandwidth of a 2Mbps connection.

Unless there's a physical problem with the USB port of their computer or the router itself.

Its seems a waste of money to me, buying a network card when a USB connection is more than adequate to get full speeds from a 2Mbps WAN connection.