wireless card faster than ethernet wire?

Your wireless card will run at 54mbitish max whereas the ethernet will probably have no problems at all running 100mbit over 10 metre cat5e cable provided you have a 10/100 or greater network card.

With wireless you will never hit the peak rate specified on the box, its sad but true. The problem is error correction (if i remember my networking class right). Wired has much better tolerance for packet collision than wireless. If you want raw performance and dont mind lots of cabling then go wired

As long as your NIC is capable of at least 100Mbps, wired will be several times faster. Here's why:

1. Higher top speed. Wireless's rated maximum transmission speed is 54Mbps and Fast Ethernet is 100Mbps, which is almost twice as fast.

2. Better throughput/fewer losses. Wired Ethernet generally has a throughput around 90% of the rated line speed, maybe more if you tuned it well. Wireless is lucky to throughput 50% of the packets it sent. And wired Ethernet can have a throughput of 100Mbps in both TX and RX, while wireless is limited to half-duplex operation that splits the ~27Mbps between transmission and reception.

3. Almost no interference from external sources. If you are within cable range, you're getting full speed on Ethernet. Wireless speed degrades with distance and interference from microwaves, cordless phones, and other WLANs.

I DID AN ON LINE CHAT WITH LINKSYS TECH SUPPORT, THE HARD WIRE IS MUCH FASTER THAN WIRELESS, WIRE GIVES YOU UP TO 100MP (THIS IS THE SPEED OF YOUR ETHERNET CARD/ADAPTER), THE ADAPTERS ARE LIMITED,  

Now then.... thank you for wasting your bandwidth (and Linksys tech support's time) on a question that has already been answered.

LMAO i love that

Wired will always be faster than wireless. Period. Wired has up to 10Gb capacity as I recall, and wireless is Draft 802.11n at 240 Mbps. That is of course bandwidth-wise only. Most people will only do up to 54 MAXIMUM in a burst, not that it makes a difference anyway, sicne everyone just uses them to split the internet, and nobody's connection goes to 54 Mbps yet. Wired always gives you at least 100 Mbps unless you have a crappy ass router and comp or a really good router and comp. 100 is the norm, not to mention all wireless lags, including the Logitech G5 or G7 gaming, whichever it is, the wireless one lags and the wired does not. Simply the same reason all us gamers use wired equipment. It's faster, and it pretty much always will be until someone can find a way to puch radio waves and electrons faster than just electrons.

thanks The_Prophecy , do you have an absolute resolution to why linksys wrt54g wireless has so many drops and will not stay connected? ive read cordless phones,adapters,channels,isp and maybe the router, with the advise of linksys tech support. twice or more, ive replaced hardware, multiple setting changes,;done them all ,still drops.
caps off

Lets be more specific....what hardware have you changed, and what settings did you change? And where did you make those setting changes?

also, a wired network has a much lower latency

The hardware changes have been, two B Routers two g routers one b pcmcia adapter and two g pcmcia adapters for the laptop one usb adapter all linksys. Used 3 different ISP, two which were cable and one was a DSL. The last time I purchased the notebook router and adapter in the same package. Settings-- almost all the channel's. The tech at linksys had me goto properties from "My Network Places". Then he had me verify check marks and type in some numbers. I attempted to navigate from advanced areas and was to determine where I entered these numbers. I was unable determine what I changed. If you have some good techniques please give me some cook book guide to success. Do you own and operate one of these linksys systems? I am not the only person on this site with linksys drop issues. Cells and cordless phones are not the issue. I have come to the conclusion that this linksys wireless system is junk.
I have two PCMCIA slots on this laptop, I have interchanged the adapters. I running a legal XP sp2 Home Edition OS. I did not have issues with networking when I was hard wired to the router. I am considering wasting more of linksys tech support time.

The people posting here obviously don't run their own Wifi networks, and haven't setup wireless networks either.

Wireless 802.11g is a great thing to have for your laptop, music streaming device, and PDA . It sucks for everything else.

There's no such thing as "packet collision" on an ethernet network, unless you are using HUBs instead of switches - and who in blue blazes would be dumb enough tobuy a 100Mb HUB??? Even with HUBs, there are no collisions on a radio device.

The big thing with Wireless is "packet loss" (not collision!) and loss can be as high as 75% on a dodgy Wifi connection. Even with very little (5% - which is massive when compared to the 0% of wired ethernet) loss, a wireless entwork is HIGHLY unlikely to achieve more than 20% of rated throughput. Not 80%, not 50% - you will be LUCKY to average 20%.

That's less than 10Mb/s - and in actual fact, don't be surprised when transfering files, if your Wifi averages 1Mb/s - 1 tenth of the 30% I just mentioned!

Remember, that "54Mb/s wireless router" means "54Mb/s SHARED BETWEEN ALL CLIENTS!"

So, if you have 4 Wifi devices connected, then, at most, they'll handshake with the router, at 13.5Mb/s - but more likely, is 8Mb/s or less. Then, once again, except less than 20% of that rate for file transfers. Don't be surprised if you get 1/10th of THAT rate either!

Wifi is freaking great where you can't install wires - have devices which will be useless with an ethernet cable attached (Lapto, PDA) but it is utterly useless for speed, reliability, and robustness. Ask anyone who actually runs Wifi networks.

Gaming on a wifi connect would be insane - because of the lossy nature of the connect.

well, actually i have setup a wireless network already, so what? you may have setup 1 million wireless networks, then what? you'll never be the only one right, as nobody will...

now, if you have 75% packet loss on your network i dont think you have too much of experience with these type of networks... even 20% is insanely stupid.

i've seen connections from 1 mile, using the right antenna, no packet loss.

the only thing i agree with you is:



the other stuff you said you're just generalizing too much.

I had that router and found it was bad for large file transfers(would crash it streaming 8-mbit pvr data). I just got an SMC and it was fixed. As for wireless speed. it is always slower due to lag. Also the mentioned error correction/collision avoidance(CSMA/CA). The damn thing send an ack for every packet it gets. So 54mbits becomes cut in half in almost all cases.

In general 2.4ghz is an over crowded area. It has to put up with phones,bluetooth,and worst of all microwaves.

On the topic of mice and keyboards. If u stay away from bluetooth (ie stick with FastRF @ 27mhz?). In my experience fastRF does not lag at all unlike blue tooth. Now that is nothing but lag.

On wireless... If u need it get it...If you can avoid it, get wired