A very good questions has been coming up that we have answered many times and now would like the public to know about it. Many people think that Wired networking is much faster than wireless networking for your computer. This is simply a misconception.

You see there are three different speeds that most wired network cards use. They use 10MBPS, 100MBPS, and 1000MBPS. Most typically a network card uses the speed of 100mbps, and even if it supports 1000 it probably is not using it because the device such as the router or modem it is connected to does not support 1000. Wireless networks on the other hand have many different speeds depending on what type of card and router you have. They range from 12-130MBPS. You can look up what type of speed your card has by looking at the card and seeing if it says Wireless-A, Wireless-B, Wireless-G, and Wireless-N. There are a couple of other ones but they are not as common.

We will take the two most common standards: for wireless its Wireless G and for wired its 100Mbps. Wireless G runs at 54MBPS. So upon first sight it seems that the wired network is faster, which in theory it is, but there is another factor you must consider. The factor is the speed of your internet connection. To find out the speed you can go to http://sfo.speakeasy.net. For my internet connection I am running at 10MBPS.

As a visual example think of it this way I have two pipes one pipe can take 54 gallons of water and one pipe can take 100 gallons. The 100 gallon pipe can take more water, but if there is only 10 gallons running at a time there is no need to take any more water.

The only time you get the full 100MBPS is when you are tranfering data from one computer to another computer with two cards that support 100MBPS. That is why for small businesses here in San Diego we always install 1000MBPS routers and network cards, because they transfer data from their servers. But for home users they simple do not need anything faster then 54MBPS.

If you do plan on buying a wireless card, I would reccomend wireless N. It operates at a speed of 130MBPS which is faster, and who could complain about having your internet wirelessly.

MBPS-mega bits per seconds. – which is the speed your files are transfered at.

Hope this cleared up any misconceptions for you, and if you have any questions feel free to e-mail me at blog@sdcomptech.com – Until next time!

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