Wireless Speed

HUFCsteve

Hi there

We have a couple of PCs connected to the internet wirelessly. The one when you hover over the icon suggests a speed of 54.0Mbs but the other only 11.0Mbs. Why would there be a difference and is there anything I can do to increase the speed?

BillScarab

There are different standards of wireless. The commonest ones are 802.11b and 802.11g. The b standard is 11 Mbit/s and the g standard is 54 Mbit/s which would explain the difference.

However I thought if you used b and g on the same network the whole network operated at the slower speed.

EDIT: Just checked and apparently they don't necessarily drop to the lowest speed but the performance of the g device can suffer degradation.

Fifer

The speed indication (as Bill says) is the speed of your wireless network, not that of your broadband service. Unless you have an exceptionally high speed service, the wireless speeds you indicate should be adequate.

There are internet speed checking services on various websites. BT do one.

Meadows

Try this site:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/

Linbox

Try moving the Receiver and or the Transmitter.
I have an (g) access point on one side of the room and a few usb dongles about the house. Occasionally the speed drops down to 30 or even 15. If I place the access point (Transmitter) aerial against a radiator it jumps back up. My usb dongles come with extension leads, I find that my main computer needs to have the dongle on top of the PC while the one by the TV needs to be infromt of the PC. Also depends on the amount of computers trying to connect via wireless at the same time.