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killadark
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How to speed up wireless transfer on network

Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:20 am

I have a dlink dhp1320 and would like if the wireless transfer speeds of my shared files to be higher than a mere 1-2mb/s
the router boasts 200mbps but i am not sure how to achieve that i cant even stream a 1080p video from my laptop to phone
any help will be appreciated .
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absurdity
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Re: How to speed up wireless transfer on network

Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:38 am

What kind of wireless NIC are you connecting to it with? How far away is it? What's in the path between the two?

Also an important distinction - the speed of the unit is measured in Mbps (Megabits) and I'm guessing when you say 1-2mb/s, you're talking about MBps (Megabytes). Not an unimportant distinction when trying to measure things up here.
 
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Re: How to speed up wireless transfer on network

Sat Nov 17, 2012 9:04 am

I suspect the issue is with your phone. Most phones are not made for high speed data transfer over wi-fi. While I have a 5 ghz (which means it is wireless-n) wi-fi NIC in my phone, I would never try to stream an HD movie from another wi-fi device. Netflix works well with my 720p screen, but netflix does some pretty spiffy optimizations. I would try and get a speed monitor for your phone and see what your transfer speeds for your phone are. But remember, wi-fi to wi-fi is going to be relatively slow regardless. You have 2 seperate wireless devices which will mean that you have will have twice the possibility of interference occuring. One option you can look at is to connect your laptop by a wired connection and then see if your phone's transfer rate improves.

Regardless, your best option is to transfer movies over a wired connection. While its going to be a large file, I would even transcode it down to a lower resolution and bitrate. DVD-quality aroun 1,500 kbs on small phone screens is what I shoot for.
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just brew it!
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Re: How to speed up wireless transfer on network

Sat Nov 17, 2012 10:07 am

Do things get better if the laptop and phone are both in the same room as the router? If so, then it is an interference/distance issue. If not, then the problem is elsewhere.

You really need to look at what the max WiFi transfer speeds of the laptop and phone are. The router claiming it can do 200 Mb/s means nothing in this situation, since the connection speed will be limited to the speed of the slowest device (probably the phone).

And yeah, we need to be sure we're not mixing up megabits and megabytes here. 1 megaBYTE per second is about what you'll get if one of the devices is limited to 802.11b speed (11 mbit/sec). 2 megaBYTES per second would not be surprising if one of the devices is limited to 802.11g speed (54 mbit/sec) but has marginal signal.

The bit rates quoted for the various WiFi "flavors" are very optimistic. They assume near-perfect signal quality (i.e. unobstructed line of sight to the access point with no interference), and include overhead (so even with a perfect signal you're not going to achieve the quoted rate).
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killadark
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Re: How to speed up wireless transfer on network

Sat Nov 17, 2012 12:49 pm

absurdity wrote:
Also an important distinction - the speed of the unit is measured in Mbps (Megabits) and I'm guessing when you say 1-2mb/s, you're talking about MBps (Megabytes). Not an unimportant distinction when trying to measure things up here.


ye i mean megabyte mb/s
TheEmrys wrote:
I suspect the issue is with your phone. Most phones are not made for high speed data transfer over wi-fi. While I have a 5 ghz (which means it is wireless-n) wi-fi NIC in my phone, I would never try to stream an HD movie from another wi-fi device. Netflix works well with my 720p screen, but netflix does some pretty spiffy optimizations. I would try and get a speed monitor for your phone and see what your transfer speeds for your phone are. But remember, wi-fi to wi-fi is going to be relatively slow regardless. You have 2 seperate wireless devices which will mean that you have will have twice the possibility of interference occuring. One option you can look at is to connect your laptop by a wired connection and then see if your phone's transfer rate improves.

Regardless, your best option is to transfer movies over a wired connection. While its going to be a large file, I would even transcode it down to a lower resolution and bitrate. DVD-quality aroun 1,500 kbs on small phone screens is what I shoot for.


i am using my galaxy s3 phone and my laptop is connected to it at a speed of 54mbps
my phone gives full 16mbps of my net connection on speedtest
i will try to connect my laptop via wire and check later on

just brew it! wrote:
Do things get better if the laptop and phone are both in the same room as the router? If so, then it is an interference/distance issue. If not, then the problem is elsewhere.

You really need to look at what the max WiFi transfer speeds of the laptop and phone are. The router claiming it can do 200 Mb/s means nothing in this situation, since the connection speed will be limited to the speed of the slowest device (probably the phone).

And yeah, we need to be sure we're not mixing up megabits and megabytes here. 1 megaBYTE per second is about what you'll get if one of the devices is limited to 802.11b speed (11 mbit/sec). 2 megaBYTES per second would not be surprising if one of the devices is limited to 802.11g speed (54 mbit/sec) but has marginal signal.

The bit rates quoted for the various WiFi "flavors" are very optimistic. They assume near-perfect signal quality (i.e. unobstructed line of sight to the access point with no interference), and include overhead (so even with a perfect signal you're not going to achieve the quoted rate).


they are in the same room and my router broadcasts in 802.11n but the connection speed on laptop shows 54mbps is that right?
the transfer speed is same for any device trying to copy files from my laptop to another laptop or a phone
my phone claims to be connected at 72mbps :o which is weird cuz laptop is 54mbps
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just brew it!
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Re: How to speed up wireless transfer on network

Sat Nov 17, 2012 1:32 pm

killadark wrote:
they are in the same room and my router broadcasts in 802.11n but the connection speed on laptop shows 54mbps is that right?

Looks like the laptop is connecting at 802.11g speed. Is the laptop supposed to be capable of 802.11n?

killadark wrote:
the transfer speed is same for any device trying to copy files from my laptop to another laptop or a phone
my phone claims to be connected at 72mbps :o which is weird cuz laptop is 54mbps

Not weird at all. When you're using an access point, your connection is to the access point, not to the other system you're talking to. Each device connects to the AP at the highest speed it can negotiate (based on the capabilities of the device, the speed of the AP, and current signal conditions). The AP handles the buffering and speed translation.

WiFi has a lot of overhead. a "54 mbps" 802.11g connection is probably going to give you only around 35 mbps (that's megabits per second not megabytes) under ideal conditions, if it is the only WiFi device on the network. But in your case, you've got two devices, and the data gets transmitted twice -- once from the laptop to the AP, and again from the AP to the phone. The laptop and phone have to share the available airtime; since the phone is connecting at a slightly faster rate than the laptop it will use a smaller share, leaving about 60% of it for the laptop. So now you're down to an *effective* rate of around 21 mbps for the laptop. Dividing by 8 (since you're talking about megabytes instead of megabits), that's 2.6 MB/sec.

Bottom line: Given the connection speeds your devices are reporting, you aren't going to get more than around 2.6 MB/sec even under ideal conditions. 2 MB/sec is not at all surprising, especially if there are other devices besides the laptop and phone using the WiFi, or other nearby access points (do your neighbors have WiFi?) that could be causing interference.

Unless the laptop is 802.11n capable and can be convinced to run in that mode (or you move it to a wired connection), I don't think it is reasonable to expect any significant improvements.

Edit: If the phone supports 5 GHz WiFi you might be able to get some improvement by swapping out that D-Link for a dual-band router. This might allow the laptop and phone to operate at different frequencies so that they wouldn't need to share any more.
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killadark
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Re: How to speed up wireless transfer on network

Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:04 am

just brew it! wrote:
killadark wrote:
they are in the same room and my router broadcasts in 802.11n but the connection speed on laptop shows 54mbps is that right?

Looks like the laptop is connecting at 802.11g speed. Is the laptop supposed to be capable of 802.11n?

killadark wrote:
the transfer speed is same for any device trying to copy files from my laptop to another laptop or a phone
my phone claims to be connected at 72mbps :o which is weird cuz laptop is 54mbps

Not weird at all. When you're using an access point, your connection is to the access point, not to the other system you're talking to. Each device connects to the AP at the highest speed it can negotiate (based on the capabilities of the device, the speed of the AP, and current signal conditions). The AP handles the buffering and speed translation.

WiFi has a lot of overhead. a "54 mbps" 802.11g connection is probably going to give you only around 35 mbps (that's megabits per second not megabytes) under ideal conditions, if it is the only WiFi device on the network. But in your case, you've got two devices, and the data gets transmitted twice -- once from the laptop to the AP, and again from the AP to the phone. The laptop and phone have to share the available airtime; since the phone is connecting at a slightly faster rate than the laptop it will use a smaller share, leaving about 60% of it for the laptop. So now you're down to an *effective* rate of around 21 mbps for the laptop. Dividing by 8 (since you're talking about megabytes instead of megabits), that's 2.6 MB/sec.

Bottom line: Given the connection speeds your devices are reporting, you aren't going to get more than around 2.6 MB/sec even under ideal conditions. 2 MB/sec is not at all surprising, especially if there are other devices besides the laptop and phone using the WiFi, or other nearby access points (do your neighbors have WiFi?) that could be causing interference.

Unless the laptop is 802.11n capable and can be convinced to run in that mode (or you move it to a wired connection), I don't think it is reasonable to expect any significant improvements.

Edit: If the phone supports 5 GHz WiFi you might be able to get some improvement by swapping out that D-Link for a dual-band router. This might allow the laptop and phone to operate at different frequencies so that they wouldn't need to share any more.


well ya what you said makes sense i guess ill try the wired connection sometime when i am free
thanks for the response :D
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TheEmrys
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Re: How to speed up wireless transfer on network

Sun Nov 18, 2012 2:04 pm

For rule of thumb, you can find the maximum potential transfer speed of a device by doing the math. There are 8 bits in a byte. 54 mbits becomes 6.75 mbytes. That most your laptop is going to be able to transfer at... not counting interference, dropped packets... Lots of factors. The secnd you put it on a 100mbit Ethernet, you eliminate the interference and minimize the packet loss, but your speed is going to be 12.5 mbytes. Then the issue is what your phone and router can do. The math isn't exact, but if you just look in terms of 8 bits in a byte, you can do some very accurate (for real world) prediction of maximum performance.
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