Zane wrote:Wireless is in most cases suffers less from latency then anything wired. This is because most wiring sold commercially (Walmart, Staples, etc.) are crap. Upgrading to higher quality wiring may alleviate some of the problem. Increasing overall bandwidth (basically pay more to your ISP) could help, but also may not. Specifying bandwidth to computers (I don't think you can do this with Netgear or most home routers) just divides your overall signal to your computers however you designate, but routers don't typically favor one over another.
I disagree, wireless will always be slower latency and bandwidth then CAT5, no matter the quality of the CAT5. The CAT5 they sell at dept stores are actually higher quality than you think. Even if you had crappy CAT5, wired will always be faster latency than wireless. Even if you bought a crappy CAT5 cable from some backward mom and pop computer shop who use the lowest grade CAT5 possible with the highest price allowed, you'll still see faster latency on wired. You also have to remember there are only a handful of CAT5 manufactures that sell their materials to other companies who just stamp their name on it and use different kinds of endcaps and colors to set them apart. In fact, one of the more humorous things i've seen was, I setup a friend's network, I brought some cables I bought a while back, Linksys brand, we needed one more cable so we go to Best Buy and he buys their generic "Dynex" brand. We get it home, and both my Linksys cable and his generic cable were manufactured by "Black Box", a common CAT5 manufacture. Laughed my ace off. I'm thinking of taking pics and posting now that I am reminiscing on it.
As far as this talk about bandwith, that has very little to do with latency, and the quality of your CAT5 cable also has very litte to do with your bandwidth, only maybe if your running a 10Gbps network would quality be an issue. if your cable is damaged, or you are in an area that generates massive amounts of interference would be another cause, but then again if you were exposed to that much interference you've got cancer by now.
You could top out your allocated bandwidth, then you see latency issues. I doubt your hitting the typical 5-10Mb d/l limit. As a matter of fact, you most likely would never readh above 5mbps(625k/sec), there is no server I have rarely downloaded from anyone that exceeds 5Mbps, and thats a lucky download. Cable/Phone companies advertising "Get turbo nitro bs internet with 7Mbs downloads!!!" LOL!!!!!!!! you'll never hit much above 5Mbps, not because of the cable/phone company but because your connection is only as fast as the remote server can send to you. Another example where bandwidth affects latency is most typical upload limits are from 256k - 768k, now if you top out your upstream bandwidth that will have an impact on latency as well. I mention this, because it's very easy to top out your upstream if your using something like bittorrent and you didn't restrict the throughput on seeding, if your uploading big files to someone, etc.
Concerning bandwidth throttling, the real application for specifying bandwidth is with 32 $10,000 Cisco Catalyst switch with 48 ports all connected at 1Gbps and all 48 ports in use along with the GBIC slot connecting fibre to a core switch. Yes this is the environment that I work with, and I did not include our offsite locations. Anything smaller is just useless, why do some manufactures have options like that in their little web interface to the router? Sales, they advertise that stuff for what we call "consumer comfort" it it makes people think "oh thats cool I want that feature"... It is mostly useless in a home application. They have plenty more little "options" to attract people also, all useless. The only home application I know of would be kids and you don't want them weezing the juice with bittorrent, or you have another user in the house topping your bandwidth out alot. Even so, we are talking about UO, I once measured the throughput required, it was less than 3K/sec when your limit is 625K/sec that doesn't even qualify as a fraction of bandwidth it's so little. A little note, i've downloaded 1.1Mb/sec before... once.. I think that was from the devil himself, Microsoft.
In short,
bandwidth is how fast you can download/upload something aka throughput.
latency is how fast a single packet can reach it's destination and return aka ping.
Malek,
From everything you have reported so far, I offer this wisdom;
1a. If your getting 250ms from a wired connection, then the cable maybe damaged, sometimes a cable can be damaged in the core and you never know it, but the best way to determine this, is from a command prompt type "ping -t <ip address>" and while it's pinging, play with the cable and watch if you get any timeouts. There is one other thing, if your cables are homemade or they are really old, make sure they are crimped with the 568B standard
http://www.zytrax.com/images/cat5_color.gif and not the old 568A
1b. If you are running wireless on the desktop then try changing channels on the router, could be getting interference. If you using wireless g or wireless n, they operate on 2.4/5Ghz and there are alot of other devices that operate on that wavelength, they could be interfering, could be devices in households nearby. The laptop may have a better waveguide then your desktops adapters therefore giving you good pings on the laptop. I strongly urge anyone with wireless and latency issues to just do some googling on "wifi interference" there is alot of good material out there. I reccommend on your laptop and desktop to use the "ping -t <ip>" and let it run for a few minute, then "ctrl-c" out and it will give you the avg packet loss, you want it to say 0%. Ping your router, not a public ip. Here is an excelent document that explains exactly how the wifi signals work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11
2. To eliminate the possibility there is a rouge program sending massive amounts of data to some botnet, reboot into "Safe mode With Networking", while in that mode, do your pings again.
3. You have a hardware issue with your network adapter, built-in or not, this is unlikely since you say 2 desktops are having problems. Try borrowing a friends pci network adapter if available. I'd hate for you buy a pci nic and it not be your issue.
I hope this helps anyone in doubt of networking issues... if I think of anything else i'll update...
