What transfer rates should I be getting over this connection?

[Daneel]

I've just set-up a wireless router and am very pleased with the result overall.

Streaming media from my main box, dowstairs to the laptop and into my receiver via USB is really cool!

I am a little disappointed in the max transfer rates though.

I'm getting a little over 2MB/s so about 18Mb over a signal that is saying 54Mb with excellent to very good signal strength.

I'm using WPA-PSK encryption which seems to have an overhead of about 17%. I was hoping to acheive a speed of about 30Mb.

Any suggestions what I could do/check to improve things?

Also, there is are a load of settings on the router I haven't touched yet, mostly because I don't know what they do. The manual goes way over my head. Where might I look to learn about what settings do what and if I need them?

Thanks!

P.S. OS is XP on both PC and laptop, router is this, laptop is a Dell D600 with Dell TrueMobile 1300 adapter Rev 4.5.

[Funkstar]

i think the max you ever get from 802.11g is 26Mbit of useful bandwidth after overhead and error correcting. But i don't know what you should be expecting from it, i don't transfer data over mine, just for wireless internet really.

Signal strength really doesn't mean anything, it is the signal quality that matters, and that is something that nothing reports back to you.

Are there any other wireless networks in your area? these could be interfering with yours so it might be a good idea to play around with the chanel numbers.

Do you have a digital cordless phone? these can interefere with wireless networks quite bad. i'm lucky mine isn't a problem. Also microwaves being on can knock out a wireless signal quite well.

the 2.4Ghz band is quite crowded so there is a lot that can effect the performance.

[GDVS]

That's a pretty good speed for wireless. 23-24 is generally the maximum you'll get and that's under absolutely ideal conditions (same room, no interference), 27 would be exceptional (and the absolute maximum after overhead I believe).

[Daneel]

Thanks for that guys. It seems it's not as bad as all that then.

I'm trying to configure port forwarding (Virtual Server and Special Applications as my router calls it) at the moment for Bittorrent. It's confusing the heck out of me!

Too many settings, too much confusion.

[Daneel]

I have a wireless phone but it doesn't seem to have an effect. On my laptop, as the signal degrades the connection speed drops too, in excellent or very good it is at 54Mb or 48Mb, the worst I've seen is low signal strength and 11Mb. Is that not a reliable estimate?

I pulled the figure of 30Mb from here:

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Review...-WRT54GS-8.php

[GDVS]

If your router supports uPnP then makes sure you use a torrent client that also does (Azureus). That way your router settings will happen automagically