Kenneth E
Level 1 (10 points)

Q: Cat 5 verses wireless

Has anyone ever done a direct comparison between the airport extreme speeds verses wired directly? I tried one of my 25 foot cat 6 cables between my MBP and Air port extreme and haven't noticed any difference. I'm on a 3Mb DSL connection and tried the speedtest.net site and if anything the wired seemed to be a bit slower. I was just wondering if anyone else had tried this and found similar results? Thanks.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Feb 21, 2012 12:48 PM

Close
Kenneth E

Q: Cat 5 verses wireless

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

  • by Gil Ramirez,

    Gil Ramirez Gil Ramirez Feb 22, 2012 1:34 PM in response to Kenneth E
    Level 1 (67 points)
    Feb 22, 2012 1:34 PM in response to Kenneth E

    Speeds will depend on your computer's hardware rather than the type of cable being used. If your computer only has a 10/100 Ethernet NIC, it will be slower than a typical 802.11n wireless network. If you have a 10/100/1000 "Gigabit" NIC, however, it will almost always be faster than an 802.11n wireless network. On a 3mb DSL connection, it won;t make much of a difference. If you're transfering files across a network, then it will make a huge difference.

  • by Kenneth E,

    Kenneth E Kenneth E Feb 22, 2012 4:14 PM in response to Gil Ramirez
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Feb 22, 2012 4:14 PM in response to Gil Ramirez

    I suspected as much and thanks. My MBP is the Gigabit and i'm running the prevoius Airport extreme and yes as it turns out the bottleneck is the DSL. it seems as though i signed up for and was sold 6Mb service and after all was said and done and i questioned tec support as to why i couldn't seem to get any better than 2.9 or 3  i found out 3 is all that i'm "qualified" for in my area..... While the customer retention team did try and make things better by locking my current price and giving my the discount/ rebate for install and modem,I still feel as though i was misled. Had i known BEFORE i signed on for 6 months that this litle scenerio is common practice, i'd have probably looked more closley at cable at least then i could stream a HD movie without the constant buffering. "Welcome to WIndstream!" Thank you again for for the help.