[ILUG] Simple question about home wired Ethernet

[Paul Jakma]

On Fri, 13 Aug 2004, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> Actually I only have 10Mbs ethernet,
> so it is about the same speed as WiFi.

No, it's twice as fast as WiFi and a decimal order of magnitude 
better latency, and several orders of magnitude more reliable. (well, 
last one is a guess).

> But what exactly do you people do with this great speed?

Transfer data usually..

> so the speed of the WiFi connection would be the least of my worries.

Sounds like access to your DSL router is the only thing you use WiFi 
for then, in which case, yes it's the least of your worries. Some 
people store stuff like mp3s, dvds, mpgs, on a central machine and 
play them on others, or have /home on NFS. Oh yeah, another 802.11 
sucks for is X, I have a laptop that is maxed out of RAM at 128MB, 
and it'd be much better use as an X terminal, except 802.11 is 
noticeably laggy.

> I'm not sure what you mean.

Computer1 ....... <-----802.11b link----->Computer2

>From computer1, 'ssh Computer2' and type.

> I don't notice any difference between a window on the local 
> machine, and one on my desktop upstairs.

For me, it sucks. Noticeable lag and jitter. Maybe when my additional 
APs arrive it'll improve things, but I doubt it'll get rid of the 
latency completely.

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	paul at clubi.ie	paul at jakma.org	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
To err is human, to moo bovine.