Would using a desktop PC as wifi repeater slow LAN traffic?


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My wireless laptop is pretty far from the router; at least 2 floors and at times even brick walls and in the shed.  But it's usually right next to my wired desktop PC.  I only have one ethernet cable running down here, otherwise I'd wire the laptop too.  Besides, I often need to bring the laptop elsewhere, and I wouldn't want to have my torrents switching networking adapters and losing connections everytime I switch from wired to wifi.

 

I happen to have a 7-year-old Linksys WMP54G PCI Wireless-G card that I don't use, and its got a nice big hefty antenna, which makes me think it has some nice transmit power too.  I was thinking of putting it in the wired desktop PC, and having the desktop PC act as an access point, bridging the wifi with the LAN.  Before I go and figure out how to do all that, would it even be worth it?  I often need to use all of my available network bandwidth, because I use BTSync between the computers, but I only get about 2mB/s between my laptop and desktop, thats only double my WAN speed!  I was hoping that having a wifi repeater would help out the speeds, but would the PC bridge act as a bottle neck and result in not any significant net speed gain?

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well im not sure but i think you can only turn routers into access points, a wireless card wont do that i think. If the card has an option to be used as an access point then turn it on and try. if it hasnt it prolly cant be

 

oh and its prolly got a big antenna cus its 7 years old haha

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well im not sure but i think you can only turn routers into access points, a wireless card wont do that i think. If the card has an option to be used as an access point then turn it on and try. if it hasnt it prolly cant be

 

oh and its prolly got a big antenna cus its 7 years old haha

 

I'm pretty sure they can, as long as you have another network card to talk to the router, and I'm using my mobo's ethernet for that.  For example, there are many guides on how to do the other way around; use a wireless laptop as a wired access point, because back in the day the Xbox 360 didn't have a built in wifi adapter, and the USB one was like $80 or something ridiculous, so people just used their wifi laptops, wired with a patch ethernet cable to the xbox, as a network bridge.

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yea, you can. If your link to the router is gigabit you shouldn't notice any speed issues at all.

 

The router is gigabit, the network adapter is gigabit, but the cables are only 100mbit. So I only see about 11mBytes/s out of btsync when I'm wired.  But I'm only getting 1-2mB wireless, which is 8-16mbit, but DD-WRT says the wireless laptop is connected at 65mbit TX, 54mbit RX.

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"but the cables are only 100mbit"

What?? And what cables are those? 1000Base-T was designed and in the spec to be able to run over cat5, there really is no such thing as a 100mbit cable.. Unless you got some really old cat 3 using 4 wires?

Dude just go by any ole wireless cheap ass $20 router and use it as an AP.

Here

http://www.pc-canada.com/item/TL-WR740N.html

18.99 CDN, why would you spend time dicking around trying to make your desktop into AP? You think your performance sucks now, bridge in your interface with wireless watch the hit..

I would also look into why your not getting gig?? Any $2 Cat 5 or 5e cable is capable of gig so replace them if you think they are bad.. Its almost hard to buy only cat5 these days they are all 5e.. But walk into your local computer store to get robbed they are only a couple of bucks.

Here is 25 footer.. Which you prob don't need? for whole 5.50 CDN

http://www.cablesalescanada.com/products/CNET5E-25B.html

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The router is gigabit, the network adapter is gigabit, but the cables are only 100mbit. So I only see about 11mBytes/s out of btsync when I'm wired.  But I'm only getting 1-2mB wireless, which is 8-16mbit, but DD-WRT says the wireless laptop is connected at 65mbit TX, 54mbit RX.

That's G wireless for you, 54 is closer to 21 in reality, if you're really really lucky.

So yeah, just get a cheap router/AP/repeater

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That's G wireless for you, 54 is closer to 21 in reality, if you're really really lucky.

So yeah, just get a cheap router/AP/repeater

 

Except it's supposed to be N wireless.  Maybe I haven't set it up in the linux laptop right.

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I happen to have a 7-year-old Linksys WMP54G PCI Wireless-G card that I don't use

 

Talking about this. 

 

also your wireless speeds now indicate you are running at G, quite possibly you have another G device on the network. in which case if you don't have a more modern router that has a function to separate G devices on the network, it will slow down the whole network to G speeds. 

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"modern router that has a function to separate G devices on the network, it will slow down the whole network to G speeds. "

Only way to do that would be dual band, where N are on 1 and G is on the other.

Wireless is SHARED, its like a highway getting stuck behind a slow driver. If you have Slow talkers then your fast talkers will get slowed down.. Is not as bad as B but G will slow down N just for the fact that they can not talk as fast.

So unless you can put say all your G on the 2.4 and let your N talk on 5 your going to slow down everyone putting G an N together.

But I am more interested in this 100mbit wire thing.

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My advice is have a play with the PC acting as a bridge/booster and see what works. I have used PC's as wifi bridges and Boosters and it does work but there is no one size fits all solution so give it a go, you cant hurt anything at the end of the day.

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"modern router that has a function to separate G devices on the network, it will slow down the whole network to G speeds. "

Only way to do that would be dual band, where N are on 1 and G is on the other.

Wireless is SHARED, its like a highway getting stuck behind a slow driver. If you have Slow talkers then your fast talkers will get slowed down.. Is not as bad as B but G will slow down N just for the fact that they can not talk as fast.

So unless you can put say all your G on the 2.4 and let your N talk on 5 your going to slow down everyone putting G an N together.

But I am more interested in this 100mbit wire thing.

 

 

Not true. my Asus, as well my my older linksys has an option that's specifically isolates G devices on the network so they don't affect the speed of N devices. 

 

Granted I generally put any device I can on the 5 Ghz network. 

post-69433-0-66635200-1377443074.jpg

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"modern router that has a function to separate G devices on the network, it will slow down the whole network to G speeds. "

Only way to do that would be dual band, where N are on 1 and G is on the other.

Wireless is SHARED, its like a highway getting stuck behind a slow driver. If you have Slow talkers then your fast talkers will get slowed down.. Is not as bad as B but G will slow down N just for the fact that they can not talk as fast.

So unless you can put say all your G on the 2.4 and let your N talk on 5 your going to slow down everyone putting G an N together.

But I am more interested in this 100mbit wire thing.

 

Okay, it was my father who wired this house, and he told me he used "100mbit only" wires.  However, I'm staring at the oldest ethernet wire in the house, and it clearly says "Gigabit CAT5e" on it.  Silly dad.  

 

So I have a gigabit router, and a gigabit ethernet card, and gigabit wires.  Now I gotta figure out why I'm running in 100mbit mode

 

EDIT: Right clicking on my "Marvell Yukon 88E8071 PCI-E Gigabit", clicking properties, configure, advanced, Speed & Duplex, it is set to "auto", but the only other options listed are 10mbit and 100mbit full and half duplex.  Perhaps my drivers aren't using my card properly?

 

As for the wireless speeds; well pretty much every device in this house is running on Wireless-N, except for a printer, and an old laptop.  I have the router set to "NG Mixed", so I would assume those two G-only devices are slowing everyone else to G speeds.

 

But I DO have another, completely unused band in the router!  The router is a dual-band 2.4ghz and 5ghz router.  We disabled the 5ghz band because it didn't have useable range; you had to be in the same room as the router to even see the 5ghz SSID.  Is there any way I could configure the 5ghz band to be a 2.4ghz N access point?  Or do they use fixed-clock crystals, forcing it to be 5ghz no matter what?  

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"Now I gotta figure out why I'm not running in gigabit mode."

So your nic shows 100mbit?

post-14624-0-82240100-1377443719.png

edit

as to your drivers not showing option for hard code to 1000, this is quite common. Gig should always be auto negotiated, hard coding breaks stuff in the spec.

post-14624-0-73280800-1377446448.png

Ir your on auto and its not showing gig.. Then something wrong with the cable as hawkman says below, or the other end is not in gig either.. Sure your router or where that cable goes is gig, what is your router spec, is there a switch between you and the router.. Maybe those wires in the walls all run to a distribution switch in the basement or something that is only 100mbit.

Simple test to see if wire in the walls - take any other patch cable and connect using that known good cable.

Maybe your dad only hooked up 4 of the 8 wires? ;) Yeah never going to work gig then..

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the cable quality may in some cases cause the equipment to only allow syncing at 100 though. 

I know I need to redo the cable between the first and second floor in my house since to much pulling and bending of it at to high angle caused it to only allow syncing at 100. 

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"Now I gotta figure out why I'm not running in gigabit mode."

So your nic shows 100mbit?

 

Yes, it shows 100mbit there.

 

the cable quality may in some cases cause the equipment to only allow syncing at 100 though. 

I know I need to redo the cable between the first and second floor in my house since to much pulling and bending of it at to high angle caused it to only allow syncing at 100. 

 

I think I might be having the exact same issue.  When I was searching for the drivers for my NIC, I also found that they have an "ethernet cable quality tester" program designed for my NIC.  So I unplugged the router's power (because it doesn't work when there's a link established, but I left the ethernet cable plugged into the router, because otherwise the testing program showed "open/broken cable" for all 4 tests) and ran the test:

 

post-49903-0-79104400-1377446140.png

 

Now this is a 75 foot cable, so it should be 22.86 metres.  Could someone well versed in ethernet and Cat5e and networking explain to me what these testing results mean?  From what I understand, 100mbit only uses 4 wires, so that's why I can still be using 100mbit connection while wires 4-5 are broken 16 metres away from my computer.  Also, I know that impedance means resistance, but what does "impedance mismatch" mean for me and my network?

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"specifically isolates G devices on the network so they don't affect the speed of N devices. "

That is NOT what that says.. Where does it use the word isolate? And how exactly do you think it could do that.. Where is the actual full technical description of that check box from the maker? I can not seem to find it, and normally my google fu is quite good. Do you have a link?

Sorry don't care what its says it does.. It is NOT possible to isolate traffic on the same wire/wireless connection. Your 1 wireless radio can not talk to more than 1 client at time.. So how does it isolate them so they don't slow down the others traffic.

If your car can do 100mph, and some car gets in front of you that only goes 50.. How do you expect to do 100? Now when that car takes an exit you can do 100 again.. But your problem is you have cars that can only do 50 entering and leaving the road all the time -- so its not possible for you to do 100.. Unless you create 2 roads, one for slower cars G, and 1 for faster cars N.. This requires 2 radios..

I would suggest you do a test.. So only 1 N device connected to your network.. Do some speed tests, then connect a G device but not really doing anything with that setting on and off and do your speed tests again.. What do you see?

Now get your G device doing a file copy.. And then do your speed test again with N client, what speeds to you see then? ;)

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You said if you had another cable you would wire the laptop too. Why not just buy an inexpensive 4 port switch, connect the incoming cable to it and than a cable to your DT and one to the LT.

 

Easy peasy and full speed.

 

:D

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"but the cables are only 100mbit"

What?? And what cables are those? 1000Base-T was designed and in the spec to be able to run over cat5, there really is no such thing as a 100mbit cable.. Unless you got some really old cat 3 using 4 wires?

Dude just go by any ole wireless cheap ass $20 router and use it as an AP.

Here

http://www.pc-canada.com/item/TL-WR740N.html

18.99 CDN, why would you spend time dicking around trying to make your desktop into AP? You think your performance sucks now, bridge in your interface with wireless watch the hit..

I would also look into why your not getting gig?? Any $2 Cat 5 or 5e cable is capable of gig so replace them if you think they are bad.. Its almost hard to buy only cat5 these days they are all 5e.. But walk into your local computer store to get robbed they are only a couple of bucks.

Here is 25 footer.. Which you prob don't need? for whole 5.50 CDN

http://www.cablesalescanada.com/products/CNET5E-25B.html

 

Holy outdated tech shop....!

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"just assume this function does what it says"

That's the thing - what is it saying actually? It doesn't say it isolates them, says allow b/g to not affect n.. WTF does that mean? Says nothing about speeds or performance.

As to your tomato setup.. And what setting did you run when or are you talking about in tomato?

CTS Protection Mode

When set to Auto, a protection mechanism will ensure that your Wireless-B devices will connect to the Wireless-G router when many Wireless-G devices are present. However, performance of your Wireless-G devices may be decreased.

I have been unsuccessful finding anything that gives tech detail of that setting.. But a normal mixed mode setting for b/g/n you don't lower the overall data rate but clients now have to send out rts/cts at b/g rates so that those clients know how long the n client will be using the airwaves.

You do understand that if B and or G clients show up the router has to send out beacons and probe responses so that those clients see them, etc.

If what your looking for is performance, then B should not be on G.. And G should not be on N.. One way or the other there is going to be a performance hit.. Now if what your doing is browsing the net, viewing email you most likely wont really notice.. But if your wanting to stream media, download using full pipe, etc. Then yeah its going to be a HIT..

If you don't have G devices, why do you allow for them - just setup to be N only..

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"just assume this function does what it says"

That's the thing - what is it saying actually? It doesn't say it isolates them, says allow b/g to not affect n.. WTF does that mean? Says nothing about speeds or performance.

As to your tomato setup.. And what setting did you run when or are you talking about in tomato?

CTS Protection Mode

When set to Auto, a protection mechanism will ensure that your Wireless-B devices will connect to the Wireless-G router when many Wireless-G devices are present. However, performance of your Wireless-G devices may be decreased.

I have been unsuccessful finding anything that gives tech detail of that setting.. But a normal mixed mode setting for b/g/n you don't lower the overall data rate but clients now have to send out rts/cts at b/g rates so that those clients know how long the n client will be using the airwaves.

You do understand that if B and or G clients show up the router has to send out beacons and probe responses so that those clients see them, etc.

If what your looking for is performance, then B should not be on G.. And G should not be on N.. One way or the other there is going to be a performance hit.. Now if what your doing is browsing the net, viewing email you most likely wont really notice.. But if your wanting to stream media, download using full pipe, etc. Then yeah its going to be a HIT..

If you don't have G devices, why do you allow for them - just setup to be N only..

 

You guyyyyss!  Stop threadjacking!  My problem is more important than you trying to make this guy understand how wrong he is! :P

 

Could anyone analyze the picture I attached and tell me what my ethernet cable test results mean?

 

 

You said if you had another cable you would wire the laptop too. Why not just buy an inexpensive 4 port switch, connect the incoming cable to it and than a cable to your DT and one to the LT.

 

Easy peasy and full speed.

 

:D

 

I don't have a switch, but I have a very cheap crappy 4 port hub.  (I know its a hub, not a switch/router, because it has no gateway, or configuration web page, or anything like that.  There are no settings, you just plug stuff in and hope it works.)  Is a hub good enough?  Or does a switch enable me to use more of the available speed between two computers better?

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"Could anyone analyze the picture I attached and tell me what my ethernet cable test results mean?"

Means the cable is JUNK!! Replace it.. You can not get gig without all 4 pairs (8 wires)..

Are there jacks in the wall, or just patch cable hanging out some hole? You could try redoing the ends.. As to testing a cable from one side with the switch off?? Yeah not so sure about the validity of impedance testing with nothing on the other end? You can get a cable tester for very cheap! Not going to tell you that is passes all the qualification tests, etc. But should tell you if its good or bad..

http://www.amazon.ca/Rj45-Network-Cable-Tester-Shipping/dp/B00815O5EI

if you want to read about impedance mismatch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impedance_matching

But what it comes down too.. you need a new run if you want to run gig.. You have 4 out of your 8 that say broken.. can not run gig even if your other 4 showed perfect.

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"Could anyone analyze the picture I attached and tell me what my ethernet cable test results mean?"

Means the cable is JUNK!! Replace it.. You can not get gig without all 4 pairs (8 wires)..

Are there jacks in the wall, or just patch cable hanging out some hole? You could try redoing the ends.. As to testing a cable from one side with the switch off?? Yeah not so sure about the validity of impedance testing with nothing on the other end? You can get a cable tester for very cheap! Not going to tell you that is passes all the qualification tests, etc. But should tell you if its good or bad..

http://www.amazon.ca/Rj45-Network-Cable-Tester-Shipping/dp/B00815O5EI

if you want to read about impedance mismatch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impedance_matching

But what it comes down too.. you need a new run if you want to run gig.. You have 4 out of your 8 that say broken.. can not run gig even if your other 4 showed perfect.

 

It's just one solid piece of 75ft Cat5e cable, holes drilled through brick and mortar and drywall to feed them outside, down the wall, and back inside, with plenty of (admittedly unwise) heavy folding and bending and crimping along the way.  Not sure why you called it a 'patch' cable though; from what I understand it, a patch cable is either a really really short version of a cable, or in the case of ethernet, a crossover cable.

 

And no, you cannot test the cable with the router turned on, because then the tester can't send a current and reliably measure the returning current when there's other stuff flowing through the wire, like keep-alive packets.  You CAN test the cable when its unplugged on the other end, but that will only tell you the length of the cable, and not the status (because all the links are broken when its unplugged).

 

And it might only be 2 of those 4 that are actually broken;  The one that reads "16m".  The last two might read "open/broken cable" because the router has physically disconnected them, because it doesn't need them, because it saw that the 2nd-last pair was broken.

 

And I could just test the cables myself with a multimeter; all that a cheap ethernet tester does (and all that this software is doing) is measuring the resistance of the cable, given a known resistance of 1 meter of standard Cat5e, and telling you the estimated length, and whether or not the resistances match.

 

But either way, yeah, it looks like I need a new 75ft cable and lots of wire-through-hole-feeding-skill.  Great. :(

 

But maybe I'll just wait until the new 1.3gbit wireless comes out.  No point in trying to switch to gigabit ethernet if the next wireless std is going to be of comparable speed :P

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