Comments on: Airport vs. Ethernet: wireless at the cost of speed?

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 06:11:35 +0000

threegs, sorry your comment got caught in my spam filter, although I can't see why. But spam filters are just like WEP—necessary to keep away evil people just waiting to attack. They (the Evil ones) are working with the aliens; it's all a conspiracy. Paranoid? Huh! Hang on, what's with that white van outside the house? Was that a knock on my door?...

By: pokermac

pokermac — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 21:26:08 +0000

I agree - with that amount of protection, only aliens could get in.

Damn those alien sniffers and MAC spoofers.

By: threegs

threegs — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 17:52:49 +0000

Try turning off the encryption. I did (with a similar setup) and it seemed to make a difference, however, this is not a great long term solution.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 08:32:59 +0000

Theft didn't occur to me. If this were the explanation then my neighbours are much cleverer than I thought! I don't broadcast my SSID, I do use WEP encryption, and I restrict access to hand-picked MAC addresses only. Short of turning it off, I beleive this is as secure as I can make my WiFi router (it doesn't do WPA). I suppose all this security would be childs play to crack for the aliens anyway...

By: pokermac

pokermac — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 06:34:58 +0000

Bandwidth theft?

By: Bruce

Bruce — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 19:16:03 +0000

Yes Bouzy I do have a cordless phone, operating in the 1880 to 1900 MHz range. But I'm not sure that's the issue. I did some more testing tonight and don't know what to make of the results (down/upstream speeds):

Mac mini Ethernet: 866/242 Kbps
Mac mini Airport: 874/232 Kbps
MacBook Ethernet: 865/242 Kbps
MacBook Airport: 865/239 Kbps

No appreciable different between connection method or machine!

So no, I don't think you would get better results using Ethernet cf. Airport. I still can't explain what (was?) affecting my Airport connection—perhaps the Mothership is no longer in orbit overhead?

By: Bouzy Rouge

Bouzy Rouge — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 08:36:48 +0000

Do you have cordless phone? I have heard that they will interfers if not 5.8MHz.

I am getting download of about 54KBps max when using airporot iBook.

I am never using ehternet with internet. Do you think ethernet would deliver faster speeds on 512/128 ADSL plan than 802.11 wireless would?

I tried ethernet once and it was basically the same speed as with wireless.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:06:59 +0000

OK, so that's 2 votes for the aliens, 0 votes for crap technology. The Truth is Out There.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:15:48 +0000

I say it's the aliens. ;)

I get really strange intermittent connection with my DSL, Qwest. Power cycling my wireless router usually fixes it, but what a pain!