LwEEs.com

Wireless Connection Speeds

I finally gave up my D-Link router and got an Apple AirPort Express, I waited two years since I originally plan this purchase but it was well worth the wait. I got the latest version of the Apple Airport Express with “N” technology (or draft “n”), none of my computers or gadgets has the “N” specs but I’m just getting ready to the future.

What made me go for the Apple product was the recent purchase of a used PowerBook G4, I try connecting to my D-Link router and I was often loosing connection, which made me very angry. I disconnected the D-Link, which had wireless “G” and four Ethernet jacks to went totally wireless, this has an impact on my Mac mini because up to today it was always connected via Ethernet.

So the main difference is just the speed, my Mac mini was getting great download speeds on some networks and I notice that this has decrease about 40% since I moved to wireless. This got me thinking, how fast is fast enough? My cable service advertise my plan as 7Mbps, that’s only the download speeds, my upload speed is about 300k/bs.

This changes when you are using only wireless, I recently ran a speed test using speedtest.net and it reported download speed of 11354k/bs and uploads of 465k/bs. I’m no expert so I don’t quite understand what this numbers mean, is 11354k/bs the same as 11Mbps or 1.1Mbps, or even worse .11Mbps. I wont even mention my upload speeds because they seem quite low, provided I don’t upload much to the web.

That is just talking about numbers, my experience in the other hand hasn’t really change that much, I do a lot of research on the web, and most pages load pretty fast. I get my podcasts via iTunes download, and they seem a bit slower than before but not really to the point that becomes a problem. I would like to know exactly what I’m loosing by using wireless as oppose to Ethernet, my D-Link was a 10/100 Ethernet which I’m note sure what it means also and well the speed ultimately depends on the source.

The way I understand it is, if the source is transmitting at 10k/bs, then that’s all you are going to get. So how fast is fast enough for you? Do you use Ethernet only, Wireless only, or a combination of both. If you have tips or tricks to improve download and upload speeds, let me know to share it with my web community.

Also, if you know of a good software to measure the uploads/downloads speeds of my provider, email me at lmenendez7@gmal.com to share it with the community as well. Find my contact information on my Find Me At tab or use my forum page. Thanks for reading.