Re: Download via wireless

Jim O'Reilly wrote:
I understand that when one uses wireless, the data transmission speed depends on the speed of the wireless network one connects to.

Can one use a high speed connection via wireless to download files, or are there some problems with wireless connections which make them impractical for downloads?

Jim O'Reilly

Go for it, you'll be glad you did.

I presume you're talking d/l from the web. No problems using wireless for downloading here. In theory, the wireless connection is slower; in practice, many other factors affect speed as much or more than the wireless connection will. I don't think you'll notice any difference if you are on consumer-level DSL. Your wired connection is running nowhere its theoretical maximum speed anyhow, nor will your wireless one. Besides, if you are on an in-house network, business or home, the number of people accessing the network at any one time will have a greater effect on overall speed of network traffic than the difference between wired and wireless.

I use an Apple Airport access point. Works very well, very fast with the Powerbook (Tiger), not so fast with the Acer TravelMate (WinXP). The difference is partly the software firewall (Zone Alarm) on the Acer, and partly Windows XP: the Acer supposedly runs at 1.8GHz, the Powerbook at 1.4GHz. If you trust the router to be adequate protection, turn off the software firewall, and your speed will roughly double.

Since subscribing to DSL, I have also found amazing differences between servers (ie, websites), and also between different times of day on the same server. Clearly, hardware and number of connections at their end can have a drastic effect on your download speed. FTP is faster, they say, but I haven't noticed that much difference.

I've also noticed that (with Windows browsers, anyhow) that the download starts in the background as soon as you click OK for Save to Disk. The download goes on while you are navigating to save location (and possibly changing the file name to suit your inability to decode random conglomerations of letters and numbers). The Download Manager actually slows down the download as soon as you click on save: it must have a high overhead. But with smaller files, the download may well be complete by the time you've clicked Save. Curious.

Finally, your distance from the ISP's DSL node will affect your download speed a lot more than wireless will. the further the distance, the dirtier the signal, hence the higher the number of repeat packets, thus reducing the net download speed.

HTH
.

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