Can wireless ever be faster than Ethernet?

All other things being equal, can a wireless connection ever be faster/
better than an Ethernet connection?

hoochxy wrote:

> All other things being equal, can a wireless connection ever be faster/
> better than an Ethernet connection?

Can't think how. So No basically. Bear in mind that ethernet is 'gigabit' now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet

Graham

"hoochxy" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:2f9fe97f-c5df-473a-a4dc-(E-Mail Removed)...
> All other things being equal, can a wireless connection ever be faster/
> better than an Ethernet connection?

No!

Modern Ethernet is a full-duplex point-to-point link between the workstation
and the network switch. Almost everything these days offers 100Mbits/sec,
and Gigabit is common. 10Gbit may well be available.

The limiting factor as far as the network is concerned is the bandwidth of
the network switch. An entry-level HP switch such as the 2600 range, see:
http://www.hp.com/rnd/products/switc...s/overview.htm offers
around 10 GigaPackets/sec - more sophisticated products provide more.

By contrast wireless uses the radio channel as a shared medium. The analogy
in the workd of ethernet via cable is the old 10Base5 or 10Base2 co-ax cable
which operated at 10Mbits/sec half duplex. This is a "collision domain"
where all clients contend for use of the communication medium. But in the
cable example the collision avoidance mechanism operates at the sub-packet
level, whereas in the wireless environment the collision avoidance mechanism
operates at the packet level. Thus a wireless client exchanges protocol
packets to request use of the medium before transmitting any payload data

So even though wireless may be specified to operate at 54 Mbits/sec, it
achieves nothing like half the throughput of 100Mbit/sec cabled ethernet -
typically much less, probably around 10 Mbits/sec

The issue of "Better" is quite different. If you need to connect a computer
the other side of an inconvenient physical barrier (road, railway, river, or
the like) then wireless could well be better than wired ethernet ...

--
Graham J

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Eeyore <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>
>hoochxy wrote:
>
>> All other things being equal, can a wireless connection ever be faster/
>> better than an Ethernet connection?
>
>Can't think how. So No basically. Bear in mind that ethernet is 'gigabit' now.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet

There are specilised devices capable of transmitting data at high speeds
wirlessly - eg. the microwave dishes that link most of the mobile phone
basestations together, and in-fact most of the country before a lot of
the fibre was installed....

I worked for a company recently (Orthogon, now a part of Motorola) who
designed and made high speed point to point wireless links - they could
transmit at 300Mb/sec and had Gb interfaces. However they were not
exactly aimed at the "domestic" market! (But I understand there are
100's or thousands of these units in developing countries being used to
create their telecoms 'backbone' as they're so much cheaper to install
than digging the roads up to lay cable/fibre!)

Not faster than "Ethernet" which today is in the Gb range, even at the
domestic level, but improvements are being made all the time, so who
knows what speeds they'll have next year...

Gordon

"hoochxy" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:2f9fe97f-c5df-473a-a4dc-(E-Mail Removed)...
> All other things being equal, can a wireless connection ever be faster/
> better than an Ethernet connection?

Only in the flippant sense that a good 54 Mbps wireless connection may
achieve a higher speed than an old 10 Mbps Ethernet connection.

But if you compare the highest that each technology can achieve, Ethernet is
always ahead of wireless:

100 Mbs Ethernet was available when 11 or 54 Mbps wireless was the best that
could be achieved.

1000 Mbps (1Gbps) Ethernet is now available (though few domestic PCs and
routers support it yet) and the highest wireless AFAIK is 108 Mbps, from
proprietary solutions such as Netgear's GT router, and using the Wireless-N
open standard I don't think the speed will be much greater.

"hoochxy" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:2f9fe97f-c5df-473a-a4dc-(E-Mail Removed)...
> All other things being equal, can a wireless connection ever be faster/
> better than an Ethernet connection?


Modern wireless connections at 54 Mbits/sec are faster that the original
cable ethernet speeds of 10 Mbits/sec so it depends on what you mean by 'All
other things being equal'. As to better it depends on what value you place
on the convenience of not having to use a cable.

Quite likely either form of connection will be faster than an ADSL broadband
connection.

--
Michael Chare

hoochxy wrote:
> All other things being equal, can a wireless connection ever be faster/
> better than an Ethernet connection?

Not really.

There is more bandwidth 'in' a short bit of cable than in the allowed RF
spectrum.

Gordon Henderson wrote:
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> Eeyore <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>
>> hoochxy wrote:
>>
>>> All other things being equal, can a wireless connection ever be faster/
>>> better than an Ethernet connection?
>> Can't think how. So No basically. Bear in mind that ethernet is 'gigabit' now.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet
>
> There are specilised devices capable of transmitting data at high speeds
> wirlessly - eg. the microwave dishes that link most of the mobile phone
> basestations together, and in-fact most of the country before a lot of
> the fibre was installed....
>
> I worked for a company recently (Orthogon, now a part of Motorola) who
> designed and made high speed point to point wireless links - they could
> transmit at 300Mb/sec and had Gb interfaces. However they were not
> exactly aimed at the "domestic" market! (But I understand there are
> 100's or thousands of these units in developing countries being used to
> create their telecoms 'backbone' as they're so much cheaper to install
> than digging the roads up to lay cable/fibre!)
>

Theres about 50 off them on a tower up the road, one of teh mani lnks in
the microwave data network. Feeds OUR telephone exchanges too.

Its the stock way to get signals to mobile phone towers as well.

And islands..The channel islands have undersea fibre now, but they
didn't always.

However this stiff is up in the 35GHZ region IIRC, on tight beams. A
completely dfferent animal to 2GHZ or whatever it is on a cocoa tin or
bit of bendy whip.


> Not faster than "Ethernet" which today is in the Gb range, even at the
> domestic level, but improvements are being made all the time, so who
> knows what speeds they'll have next year...
>
Backbone microwave links are probably faster than gigabit ethernet, but
not faster than gigabit fibre.

Lst time I looked fibre was easily 8Gbps..probably more now.

> Gordon

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
The Natural Philosopher <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Gordon Henderson wrote:
>> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
>> Eeyore <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>>
>>> hoochxy wrote:
>>>
>>>> All other things being equal, can a wireless connection ever be faster/
>>>> better than an Ethernet connection?
>>> Can't think how. So No basically. Bear in mind that ethernet is
>'gigabit' now.
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet
>>
>> There are specilised devices capable of transmitting data at high speeds
>> wirlessly - eg. the microwave dishes that link most of the mobile phone
>> basestations together, and in-fact most of the country before a lot of
>> the fibre was installed....
>>
>> I worked for a company recently (Orthogon, now a part of Motorola) who
>> designed and made high speed point to point wireless links - they could
>> transmit at 300Mb/sec and had Gb interfaces. However they were not
>> exactly aimed at the "domestic" market! (But I understand there are
>> 100's or thousands of these units in developing countries being used to
>> create their telecoms 'backbone' as they're so much cheaper to install
>> than digging the roads up to lay cable/fibre!)
>>
>
>Theres about 50 off them on a tower up the road, one of teh mani lnks in
>the microwave data network. Feeds OUR telephone exchanges too.
>
>Its the stock way to get signals to mobile phone towers as well.
>
>And islands..The channel islands have undersea fibre now, but they
>didn't always.
>
>However this stiff is up in the 35GHZ region IIRC, on tight beams. A
>completely dfferent animal to 2GHZ or whatever it is on a cocoa tin or
>bit of bendy whip.

The Orthogon/Motorola stuff is 5.8/5.4 GHz ... They were looking at
other bands too, but squeezing 300Mb/sec in the 5.8Ghz band was quite
impressive..

A lot of the licensed point to point stuff is "only" 6-8GHz too, but
it's been a while since I've been close to any of it ...

Gordon

Eeyore wrote:
>
> hoochxy wrote:
>
>> All other things being equal, can a wireless connection ever be faster/
>> better than an Ethernet connection?
>
> Can't think how. So No basically. Bear in mind that ethernet is 'gigabit' now.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabit_Ethernet

10Gb and 40Gb are also available now IIRC with with the specs for 100Gb
being discussed.