[Mpls] Wireless Minneapolis - one more thing, quick speed discussion

[A.J.Colianni]

On Feb 23, 2005, at 10:05 PM, rpgoldman at real-time.com wrote:

>>>>>> "JM" == Jeanne Massey <jkmassey at earthlink.net> writes:
>
>     JM> I forgot to add a key feature of wireless internet service - 
> it is much
>     JM> faster than cable or DSL.
>
> Are you sure about that?  Typically wireless offers less bandwidth
> than wired, not more.  E.g., the simple protocols that are most
> commonly used are 11 MBps or 52 (IIRC) for 802.11g.  My DSL service is
> at least 5 times that fast...
>
> If it were faster, than I would certainly imagine that the cable and
> phone people would be mad!  But I bet it's not faster.
>
> On the other hand, it's a heck of a lot cheaper not to have to run
> cables, be on top of the switch (as with DSL), and not have to rewire
> your house....
>
> Robert

Okay, I thought I would jump in quick:

Kbps = kilo bits per second
KBps = Kilo Bytes per second
Mbps = Mega Bits per second
MBps = Megabytes per second

Notice the tricky lower and capital B's? (Those computer geeks!)

(Very Very Very) Roughly:
100,000 Kbps = 1 Mbps = 1/10th MBps

-Wireless Protocols (802.11b and g, aka Airport and Airport Extreme for 
us Mac users) run at 11Mbps and 54Mbps respectively.

-Cable and DSL generally download between 256Kbps and 5Mbps and upload 
between 128Kbps and 1Mbps
-Your plain old "28.8" or 56k telephone dialup runs at 28,800 Kbps or 
56,000 Kbps

So if you have a wireless router, it is likely 2x - 50x faster than 
your Cable/DSL connection. The Cable/DSL is the bottleneck here. 
Wireless that is hooked to a faster backbone than what home users have 
available will be faster in accessing the internet than your Cable/DSL 
or Wireless hooked to Cable/DSL.
--
aj colianni
aj at colianni.net