Wireless Access Point
Discussion
Can anyone reccommend one (and cards) for small expansion to a wired network? It will be attached to a 100 mbps cable connection straight from a Netgear FS509T switch. I'll only be connecting 2 PC's and and 1 laptop to it. Probably wont need any further expansion for ages. The users in question are each currently attached to an older 10mbps switch so they would be happy with the same bandwidth. Ive been looking at the Netgear ME103 802.11b. Can anyone reccommend this? Or should I go for the WG302 802.11g seeing how money isnt a problem.
Cheers.
Cheers.
We have experienced lots of network drops with our Netgear stuff, so have stopped buying them. The 3Com ones appear to be much better in terms of reliability as do Draytek (which get good reviews). I also have used Zyxel which are neat, but also seem to suffer similar issues to the Netgear.
One product that we are yet to try but is very highly rated is one of the items from the Aruba range. www.arubanetworks.com - These are top rated US wireless vendor. We are building a relationship with a distributor in the UK for Aruba, so drop me an email if you need contact details.
One product that we are yet to try but is very highly rated is one of the items from the Aruba range. www.arubanetworks.com - These are top rated US wireless vendor. We are building a relationship with a distributor in the UK for Aruba, so drop me an email if you need contact details.
bogie said:
its autosensing....and 108Mbps wireless isnt the same as 100Mbps wired ....108Mbps wireless in reality, at best is approx 50Mbps througput. 100Mbps wired is around 80Mbps.
Why is that then? Is it down to signal strength? i.e. a 108mbps wireless setup could theoreticaly have a throughput of 108 if there was absolutely no interference or loss of signal strength?
no - protocol overhead i.e. how efficient a particular protocol is a transporting the data within it...will try and keep this simple
All speeds quoted in networking are the bit rate - this is different to the real throughput rate of traffic across that particular medium.
say you have 500bytes of data to be transported in an ethernet network, the actual amount of data transferred once you have all the headers etc on there could be 550bytes (just for example - too many variables in real life) so you would have 50bytes of protocol overhead...so scale this up and basically you transfer what windows tells you is a 500MB file made up of x thousand amount of packets all with an extra 50bytes tagged onto them...could be that actually 550MB is transmitted across the network, at 100Mbps (the bit rate speed)....you sit there with your stopwatch, time it, do the maths...and then think your network is not performing as expected !
now wireless networking takes the basis of the ethernet frame and tags on all kind of extra headers, encryption etc onto each packet - a lot more than plain old ethernet...so sending 500MB of data across a wireless network may well actually require the transmission of 750MB inc headers etc....not a very efficient protocol...so although it connects at 108Mbps the real throughput available is around 50-55Mbps
just remember that whatever 802.11 protocol you are using its approx 45-55% efficient - you get roughly 1/2 of what the bit rate speed is.
all protocols are different - some more efficient than others - the more complex they become..eg. with encryption etc, then generally the less efficient they become.
HTH !
bogie
>> Edited by bogie on Friday 15th October 15:09
All speeds quoted in networking are the bit rate - this is different to the real throughput rate of traffic across that particular medium.
say you have 500bytes of data to be transported in an ethernet network, the actual amount of data transferred once you have all the headers etc on there could be 550bytes (just for example - too many variables in real life) so you would have 50bytes of protocol overhead...so scale this up and basically you transfer what windows tells you is a 500MB file made up of x thousand amount of packets all with an extra 50bytes tagged onto them...could be that actually 550MB is transmitted across the network, at 100Mbps (the bit rate speed)....you sit there with your stopwatch, time it, do the maths...and then think your network is not performing as expected !
now wireless networking takes the basis of the ethernet frame and tags on all kind of extra headers, encryption etc onto each packet - a lot more than plain old ethernet...so sending 500MB of data across a wireless network may well actually require the transmission of 750MB inc headers etc....not a very efficient protocol...so although it connects at 108Mbps the real throughput available is around 50-55Mbps
just remember that whatever 802.11 protocol you are using its approx 45-55% efficient - you get roughly 1/2 of what the bit rate speed is.
all protocols are different - some more efficient than others - the more complex they become..eg. with encryption etc, then generally the less efficient they become.
HTH !
bogie
>> Edited by bogie on Friday 15th October 15:09
Its ok, u dont have to keep it too simple, I'm a techie, but although I understand wired networks I have no wireless experience.
Cheers for the info. I knew the bit about protocol overhead (on standard IP based networks) but I never realised the wireless protocols were that inefficient! But I suppose encryption alone (128 or possibly 256 bit) must add some pretty serious overhead.
>> Edited by JamieT on Friday 15th October 16:55
Cheers for the info. I knew the bit about protocol overhead (on standard IP based networks) but I never realised the wireless protocols were that inefficient! But I suppose encryption alone (128 or possibly 256 bit) must add some pretty serious overhead.
>> Edited by JamieT on Friday 15th October 16:55
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