Wireless speed for file transfer, really odd issue


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So I just noticed that while copying a file around a GB or so to my wife's laptop, I was getting 2.5/3MBs, now I just copied an ~800MB file to my daughters laptop, and was getting 7/Mbs! I am using TeraCopy as my default copy handler and copying from my desktop which is plugged into the router , the laptops both access via wireless. Is there any good reason that there would be such a huge difference in copy speeds?

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2.5/3 is normal for G, is your daughters N?

What router do you have? Could be turbo mode? Some routers support 108Mbps vs 54.. Again what router do you have and what laptops.

Not sure if typo -- you say 2.5/3MB but with 7 you say Mb

B = Bytes

b = bits

Big difference.

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2.5/3 is normal for G, is your daughters N?

What router do you have? Could be turbo mode? Some routers support 108Mbps vs 54.. Again what router do you have and what laptops.

Netgear WNDR3300, don't see any option for turbo mode.

Not sure if typo -- you say 2.5/3MB but with 7 you say Mb

I meant B, not b, at least that what it shows.

The Toshibia (wifes) shows: Realtek 802.11b/g wireless-LAN

The HP (daughters) shows: Integrated 10/100 Base-T Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN

So I guess that the Toshibia is only a G, where as the HP supports N, which explains the speed differences!

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The Wireless N /G isnt whats causing it. The bigger the file the more information that has to be passed to make shure its reassembled correctly on the other side, the other side can be a nother conputer, or even another folder

And wireless speed is based on the router setting, not the adapter speed, router cant talk faster then designed, and has to bump to the slowest to work with slowest adapter, oterwise youll have a router blasting to much info for the slowest adaper causing alot of resend requests from the host becuse it wasnt fast enough to keep up

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The Wireless N /G isnt whats causing it. The bigger the file the more information that has to be passed to make shure its reassembled correctly on the other side, the other side can be a nother conputer, or even another folder

I don't really know what you're trying to say here, but if he copied a 1GB file @ 3Mbps, and an 800MB file @ 7Mbps, G/N would appear to be the issue.

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I don't really know what you're trying to say here, but if he copied a 1GB file @ 3Mbps, and an 800MB file @ 7Mbps, G/N would appear to be the issue.

A packet can only be a certian length, no longer, smaller file means smaller file map, smaller file map means it can pack more of the actual file in the packet.

If its G/N then not is the G device talking to a N router, its not, the router is in compatability hybrid mode, which means transmitting at G speeds and frequency, and the router isnt talking to any adapters @ N speeds. The router can only spit out 1 wave, not 2 at a time, thats why Dual Band routers are called Dual Band and do both an N and G network at same time because they have a 2nd set of annenas and 2 wireless chips

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The Wireless N /G isnt whats causing it. The bigger the file the more information that has to be passed to make shure its reassembled correctly on the other side, the other side can be a nother conputer, or even another folder

And wireless speed is based on the router setting, not the adapter speed, router cant talk faster then designed, and has to bump to the slowest to work with slowest adapter, oterwise youll have a router blasting to much info for the slowest adaper causing alot of resend requests from the host becuse it wasnt fast enough to keep up

The difference is file size in this situation is negligable. The router he is using is dual band. There is a good chance his daughter is connected to an N-only network while his wife is connected to a mixed network. In other words, you're wrong, the "Wireless N /G" is definitely what is causing it.

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A packet can only be a certian length, no longer, smaller file means smaller file map, smaller file map means it can pack more of the actual file in the packet.

If its G/N then not is the G device talking to a N router, its not, the router is in compatability hybrid mode, which means transmitting at G speeds and frequency, and the router isnt talking to any adapters @ N speeds. The router can only spit out 1 wave, not 2 at a time, thats why Dual Band routers are called Dual Band and do both an N and G network at same time

Actually I find: the bigger the file, the faster it copies.

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The difference is file size in this situation is negligable. The router he is using is dual band. There is a good chance his daughter is connected to an N-only network while his wife is connected to a mixed network. In other words, you're wrong, the "Wireless N /G" is definitely what is causing it.

And is he conneing the N adapetr to the N 5gz only network and the G to the 2.4?

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Pleae quote where he said it was a dual band router?

"Netgear WNDR3300" - post #3. Also, the OP's actually said machine one is running b/g, whilst the other is running b/g/n.

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"Netgear WNDR3300" - post #3

Yea, i edited my post. Regardless its not the N vs G, you will see the same issues even over wired, and even folder to folder on the same drive

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Edit: ffs stop editing all your posts...

thats what EDIT is for, instead of spamming post after post after post

I call B.S.

call it what you want, if its BS then i guess it makes it moot and redundant that router tests are done with both a big file and small mp3,

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Yea, i edited my post. Regardless its not the N vs G, you will see the same issues even over wired, and even folder to folder on the same drive

Sorry but I'm going to agree with everyone here that the issue the Op is having is infact because of the different wireless protocols being used. Wireless N is faster than G.

If I remember correctly, data packets are sent at certain sizes, the only difference is the amount of packets a LAN/Wireless adapter can send/receive at once. This is why with Gigabit LAN cards you can configure the adapters to use 'Jumbo Frames' which can send bigger data packets in the same amount of time to other adapters that can support Jumbo Frames which in turn means a lot faster transfer speeds over networks. The bottleneck is indeed the wireless G connection because you cannot send or receive more than what the connection is capable of.

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thats what EDIT is for, instead of spamming post after post after post

call it what you want, if its BS then i guess it makes it moot and redundant that router tests are done with both a big file and small mp3,

The maximum performance of Wireless G is 54Mbit/s, you cannot go faster than this unless you are going to use something like Turbo G which is a specific protocol, for a specific set of adapters using a specific set of routers. Now if 54Mbit is the maximum and including in TCP/IP overhead and error correction and so on, 3Mbyte/s is pretty normal for a 54Mbit connection. Maybe you'll get even more under ideal conditions like using the right channel, there are no other things like signal noise and so on. There is a reason we have Wireless N and that's because Wireless G hit it's max while wireless N can go from 150mbit to 450mbit (maybe even higher using specialised routers with multiple N channels).

This is nothing to do with performance benchmarks and they 'moot' as you say when it comes to real life speeds. Conditions vary all the time.

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call it what you want, if its BS then i guess it makes it moot and redundant that router tests are done with both a big file and small mp3,

I just tested your theory. As was expected, the bigger file (in this case a homemade porno :p) copies much faster than the smaller file (Indie YouTube movie):

post-176093-0-76115500-1329792652.png

post-176093-0-50404700-1329792654.png

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k,

I just tested your theory. As was expected, the bigger file (in this case a homemade porno :p) copies much faster than the smaller file (Indie YouTube movie):

post-176093-0-76115500-1329792652.png

post-176093-0-50404700-1329792654.png

i did the same thing and had the same results, bigger file faster, jsut no porn.

but i still stand by my answer of the N vs G adapter not beign the cause, if choose to think otherwise so be it.

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then were both wrong, i did the same thing and had the same results, bigger file faster, jsut no porn.

Huh? I've said since the beginning that a bigger file will copy faster than a smaller one, hence "calling B.S." :s

But now I see you've edited your post again... N is faster than G. Full stop/period.

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Huh? I've said since the beginning that a bigger file will copy faster than a smaller one, hence "calling B.S." :s

But now I see you've edited your post again... N is faster than G. Full stop/period.

ye aand i jsut saw you 1 line in between others ( post 9 ). and i saw you edited yours, thinking i was arguing N vs G somehow ( i wasnt, i didnt see where he said he was connected to 2 diffrent wireless networks ( a 2.4 and a 5 ) )

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It is amazing in this day and age that we see nonsense like this.

Bigger file copies faster?? Where do you people come up with this? For one you did not even let those copies finish, second I would not put much faith into that dialog and actual speed, etc. If you want to know the speed of a file copy you need to let it complete and time the transfer. Robocopy is a good tool for this since it reports this after the copy

So example

Bytes : 400.54 m 400.54 m 0 0 0 0

Times : 0:00:08 0:00:08 0:00:00 0:00:00

Speed : 46755637 Bytes/sec.

Speed : 2675.379 MegaBytes/min.

Ended : Tue Feb 21 03:11:19 2012

Bytes : 228.20 m 228.20 m 0 0 0 0

Times : 0:00:03 0:00:03 0:00:00 0:00:00

Speed : 61104768 Bytes/sec.

Speed : 3496.442 MegaBytes/min.

Ended : Tue Feb 21 03:09:59 2012

Looks like bigger file was slower to me!

There are a lot of variables here.. You could have a 100MB file that is fragmented to all hell on the disk, and you could have a 1GB file nice and sequential.. Or it could be the other way around.

You can not make blanket statements like large copy faster, than smaller. Now are you meaning that 1 large file copies faster than lots of little files that add up to the same amount of data? Then sure the 100MB file will normally copy faster than 100 1MB files. There are many variables involved in moving a file.

As to G and N on the same network -- yes if G is talking it will slow down the N clients. But I don't understand how this thread got so out there. For one the G is not always going to be talking.. Unless your talking about doing a file copy to a G client as the same time your doing a file copy to the N client. Keep in mind that wireless is shared between all clients.

But its quite clear the OP issue here -- one client is G, and other is N -- so NO FREAKING ****!! He would be able to move a file to the N client faster than the G client! Why is this thread on page 2???

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