At the beginning of this month I wrote about my satisfaction with my new ISP, DirecPath. For only $20 per month I get a fiber line that I thought had throughput in the area of 26 megabits/sec down and 14 megabits/sec up. As you might be able to piece together from the title of this post, I was a bit wrong.
I was just maxing out the 802.11g throughput of my Linksys WRT54G2 router. I picked it up thinking that I wasn’t going to do much wireless networking and that my Internet connection wouldn’t be fast enough to warrant the upgrade to 802.11n. Again, I was wrong. When I fired up my lovely Usenet account to download legal files on my new HTPC, things started downloading much faster than I was used to with the MacBook Air over Wi-Fi.
Peak is around 85 megabits/sec.
Some of you might be asking why 802.11g was the issue when I was getting 26mbps, well within the 54mbps theoretical throughput of 802.11g. The keyword is theoretical. I am only 5 feet from the access point with a thin wall in between but my link transmit rate isn’t even close to 54mbps and the signal strength isn’t as good as it could be. In OS X, you can view additional Wi-Fi network information by option-clicking on the Wi-Fi icon in the menubar.
The point of this post is that 802.11n is useful not only if you do any wireless networking or TimeCapsule backups but also if your Internet connection is ungodly. Until I make the jump to an 802.11n Wi-Fi router, I’ll be putting the MacBook Air USB Ethernet adapter to good use.
Are you 802.11n equipped?
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Consider yourself very lucky, Paul. :) 26 Mbps is very good as throughput of a 802.11g, it is not far from the maximum thoughput of a 802.11g link. 54Mbps can never be reached, because of all the overhead, and the maximum you can reach with a 54Mbps at TCP level is about 26Mbps. :)
Anyway, here in Italy that kind of connections is considered “dream”: the maximum bitrate for a consumer offer is around 20Mbps on a DSL line, with very very very low upload band (around 512 kbps).
I can reach that upload bandwidth only when I’m connected to the wireless at my university campus (they have optical fibre connections).
And I thought before you had an amazing connection before…
Wow!
My internet connection is still significantly slower than 802.11g (3 mbit down, 512 kbit up). My WRT54GL has been serving me well for quite a while (with DD-WRT). As far as wired connections go, (which I’m on almost all the time,) I have gigabit between all my machines.
I am extremely jealous. I can’t even image how much I’d download with bandwidth like that.
That kind of internet connection is simply disgusting. NOT FAIR!!!
:-P
Enjoy it, Paul!!
So tell us, what’s it like having super-human internet?
Wow that is fast! Even with 802.11n you will not be able to max that connection out. I am assuming those test are TCP data rates.
Paul
I am indeed 802.11n equipped (Airport Extreme… could not stop myself from buying it)
Anyway, I’m making any good use out of it cause my connection is only a 2Mbit one and my sister’s laptop (who i live with) is an hp without built in 802.11n.
Anyhow, damn your internet is cheap… i pay like 100 bucks for internet, phone and basic cable (btw, i live in Chile and i this is as good as it gets)
Love the blog
$20 a month for those speeds?! I’m moving to ATL.
I pay $45 a month for 6Mbit with USCable, I work for ISP myself and we charge $39.95 for 4Mbit, and the same for 768k up north.
@Ron – Probably around the same that I have.. 170 gigs while I was sleeping last night and it had finished before I woke up. Going to need more hard drives. :-/ (legal files, like linux distros, of course..)
That is not fair. 170 gigs in one night?????
I’m lucky if I can finish 1 or 2 in one night without the connection dropping (ISP problems)…
Take advantage of that… must be nice…
Whoa. I’m very jealous. Why can’t we all be eligible :(
Oh, uh, is that a Hahlo icon in your menubar?! WTF!
@Nick – yes it is. I have a Fluid MenuExtra SSB for Hahlo.com. lifehacker had a screencast showing how to do it some time in the last 2 weeks.
Awesome, thanks Paul!
Doh! Did a speed test, and turns out my download speed’s at 307 kb/s, upload speed at 313 kb/s. Well, it gets the job done, so no ranting here. Would love to have your kind of Internet connection tho, Paul.
Lucky you!
I am stuck with comcast.
And I though I was good with a 24mbit connection here in the UK! Thats awesome, although they say that browsing speed is not noticeable above 8mbits anwyways. However for downloading that it insane!
just realized i have the same problem at work. now to unleash our T1 connection…
Wow, that is incredibly fast. I can’t believe it. And yes, I have ‘n’ and it sped everything up on the network. Home and work.
Cool!! Awesome!!! good for you Paul!!!
Well, I think I should leave my modem connection by now and move to 802.11 connection… LOL
^_^
Phossil
Animoe.net
I have no reason to make the jump from g to n right now. When I bought my DLink DGL-4300 a couple years ago I didn’t even think I would use wireless all that often but decided that wireless was at least a capability that would get some use.
I always connect to a wired connection if I’m planning on doing anything more bandwidth intensive than watching streaming video, so moving to a higher bandwidth/throughput wireless capability isn’t advantageous or cost-effective to me.
Your fans run at 6000+ RPM and your CPU is at 69 ℃?
I was running parity on a compressed file at the time (as you can see with the blue/red load graphs). That was with my external display connected so it does usually run a bit hotter with the stressed GPU.
You lucky person! In the UK, we can get a maximum of 24Mbps unless we get hacked cable in residential properties. I manage to download around 2-4Gb a day, plus around 1.4Gb upload – I need some speed madness too!
That’s awesome speed. I’ve got nowhere near that capacity at 14Mb up/ 0.8Mb down for $90/month in Australia.
The option-click for WiFi is a nice shortcut for quick and dirty survey of what you are connected to. I’m fond of AP Grapher.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/381679082.png
lol