Why aren't you letting the router auto select the channel? Also switch to 5Ghz if you're not already using it and there will be less congestion.

Finally...an ethernet cable is faster and easier when your computers are 3 feet apart...

Plasma wrote:

Why aren't you letting the router auto select the channel?

It does, but it always seems to end up on Bozo Maxpowah's channel. (Edit: also it turns out using channel 14 in North America is illegal as shit.)

Plasma wrote:

Also switch to 5Ghz if you're not already using it and there will be less congestion.

I can't seem to set the available band anywhere on the router? Nor can I force OSX to connect over 5GHz. In short, auto-config is giving me the worst possible options. (EDIT: it looks like my router doesn't support 5GHz at all?? The second antenna is to use a 40MHz band per channel instead of 20MHz, not dual-band like I thought.)

Finally...an ethernet cable is faster and easier when your computers are 3 feet apart...

It would be a huge pain to route cables across the floor or ceiling and into the physical ports on the router, and one of these machines is a laptop so it needs FREEEDOOOOOMMMM.

I wouldn't mess with router channels. It seems fine. "Bozo Maxpowah" is a non-issue, since your signal is as clear as his. Just ignore it.

If you have a third system, preferably a different OS as well, I would try that, to rule out both HW and SW issues.

Defective/dying wireless NICs can present symptoms like what you described.

So that thing every network engineer says you're not supposed to do? I'm doing it. 😜

Let me take you to channel 9, baby. Awwwww yeah.

I'm the red network again. I did turn off 40MHz band-joining (i.e. limited it to 20MHz per channel) to maybe cut down on cross-talk a bit?? I still don't know what I'm doing; honestly I'm just trying this to see what will happen. Will probably end up just picking up a cheap 5GHz router after my paycheque comes in.

It seems to make some improvement in throughput on continuous big files, but negligable on a directory containing thousands of little ones. (Still nowhere near what most sites describe as 'typical' even on a 20MHz N connection.) I was able to watch a bunch of Youtube last night without it pausing to buffer or try to drop down to 360p like it usually does. So, win?

Now let's see how long it takes every other tenant in my building to shove their networks into the "unused" overlapping channels and make a huge mess of everything. 😵

dr_st wrote:

I wouldn't mess with router channels. It seems fine. "Bozo Maxpowah" is a non-issue, since your signal is as clear as his. Just ignore it.

If you have a third system, preferably a different OS as well, I would try that, to rule out both HW and SW issues.

Defective/dying wireless NICs can present symptoms like what you described.

I get pretty similar performance on my Linux machines generally. The NIC in the laptop is fine, I use it all the time on my office network & at other people's houses. It could well be a fault in the router which I may have found in a disposal pile (albeit seemingly NIB.)

Wifi is not that fast, in the best of setups. It can't even match the speed of good Internet (100M+) in most cases.

Wired Gigabit is only 110MB/s with a really good switch. The best wireless I've seen is around 4-6MB/s, but usually slower on large transfers. With large transfers it gets good and bad depending, as you experience, because it's a shared bandwidth. 802.11 is CSMA/CD, meaning it's collision/retry based.

For comparison, since you are mentioning Mb/s, the best you'll see is 60-80 with 802.11n. 802.11ac can be faster, I don't have that. 😀

"Theoretical" limits are only that. Supposedly 802.11n can do 3x150M channels, for a total of 450Mb. I've never seen that in consumer equipment- as mentioned, real world is 1/3-1/6 of that.

Yep. If you are moving lots of data, wired is the way to go. You don't need to run cables across the floor to your router. Just connect the two computers together and give them static IPs.

That said, a sucky router is going to give you sucky wifi speeds. So if you found it in a dumpster, it was probably there for a reason.

r.cade wrote:

Wifi is not that fast, in the best of setups. It can't even match the speed of good Internet (100M+) in most cases. […]
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Wifi is not that fast, in the best of setups. It can't even match the speed of good Internet (100M+) in most cases.

Wired Gigabit is only 110MB/s with a really good switch. The best wireless I've seen is around 4-6MB/s, but usually slower on large transfers. With large transfers it gets good and bad depending, as you experience, because it's a shared bandwidth. 802.11 is CSMA/CD, meaning it's collision/retry based.

For comparison, since you are mentioning Mb/s, the best you'll see is 60-80 with 802.11n. 802.11ac can be faster, I don't have that. 😀

"Theoretical" limits are only that. Supposedly 802.11n can do 3x150M channels, for a total of 450Mb. I've never seen that in consumer equipment- as mentioned, real world is 1/3-1/6 of that.

802.11 is CSMA/CA. There's a dead period after transmitting to avoid collisions.

xjas wrote:

It would be a huge pain to route cables across the floor or ceiling and into the physical ports on the router, and one of these machines is a laptop so it needs FREEEDOOOOOMMMM.

Just do a direct connection between both machines with a single cable. Or, if you have an extra router available, use it as a DHCP server to make it happen.

Plasma wrote:

Yep. If you are moving lots of data, wired is the way to go. You don't need to run cables across the floor to your router. Just connect the two computers together and give them static IPs.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Just do a direct connection between both machines with a single cable. Or, if you have an extra router available, use it as a DHCP server to make it happen.

Maybe my knowledge is out of date but I thought you needed a crossover cable to do this?? Anyway I'm trying to speed things up for all uses (e.g. watching videos on the couch across the room or streaming audio around with minimal latency), not just this specific case of copying files.

Plasma wrote:

That said, a sucky router is going to give you sucky wifi speeds. So if you found it in a dumpster, it was probably there for a reason.

Well, it did seem to be new in box, so there's that. 😜

xjas wrote:

Maybe my knowledge is out of date but I thought you needed a crossover cable to do this?? Anyway I'm trying to speed things up for all uses (e.g. watching videos on the couch across the room or streaming audio around with minimal latency), not just this specific case of copying files.

Modern 100baseT and all 1000baseT adapters automatically negotiate the media interface (aka auto MDI-X).