First, let's start with your incoming broadband Internet connection. Most connections through DSL or Cable range anywhere from 1 Mb/s (Megabit per second, more on that in a second :-) up to about 20 Mb/s. What does that mean in simple terms? Well, I'll put a chart at the end of this post, but a Megabit should not be confused with what you normally think of in terms of computer storage the Megabyte. Just remember that there are 8 bits that make up a byte, so anytime you see transfer speeds of bits per second, you need to divide by 8 to get the equivalent bytes per second.
So, a somewhat typical 5 Mb/s broadband internet connection can transfer 5,000 bytes (1 megabyte = 1,000 bytes) per second. So what you say? Well, doing a little math that is equivalent to 625 bytes per second.
In more realistic terms, let's say you have a single layer DVD that is FULL (4.37 Gigabytes or GB) of about an hour's worth of home videos. Let's say you want to download the equivalent DVD over your 5 Mb/s broadband connection. How long will that take? Hint, pay attention, we'll use this DVD example for wireless, wired network, and hard drive speeds later. Well, multiplying out 4.37 * 1024 gives us 4474 mega bytes to transfer. Multiply 4474 * 1024 again to get the total bytes to transfer at 4,582,277 . Multiply again by 8 to get the bits to transfer and it is about 36,658,217. Now, your internet speed can handle 5,000 of those bits per second, so it would theoretically take about 122 minutes or about 2 hours-- quite a long time.
Reality check though: No internet connection advertised at 5 Mb/s will really download that fast and any network connection will never work at it's peak rate, those are the rate of the 'pipeline' so to speak, but the pipeline is never stuffed completely full, so realize this rate is somewhat of a hypothetical one, in reality it would take a bit longer.
Next, let's examine the different wireless network speeds for your laptop, TV, or gaming console. First, realize that wired networks speeds are generally spoken of as 10/100/1000 or 10 Mb/s, 100 Mb/s, and 1000 Mb/s or 1 Gb/s (Gigabit networking). Just as a comparison, I'll get to those with our DVD example shortly.
So, you've got a wireless network setup and your laptop or Wii can handle wireless "G" networking. What does that mean? Well the G standard means speeds up to (again that hypothetical pipeline) of 54 Mb/s. Using our DVD example it would take about 11.3 minutes to download the home movie that fills up a single-layer DVD. That is much better and much faster than downloading it off of the internet! Now, this assumes that you already have the DVD on another machine (such as a server) and you are copying the contents to your wireless device, laptop, etc., using the G standard.
The wireless N standard is up to 150 Mb/s so it is faster than most common 100 Mb/s wired networks. However, you've got to have a newer laptop that supports the wireless N. In addition, you've got to have a wireless N router or box that emits the signal and processes in the N class. Currently, these boxes are about $80 or so. You can buy a G box new for about $40. What is the download or speed difference for upgrading? Well, that DVD that took 11.3 minutes on the G network would download in 4 hypothetical minutes. So, taking 150 (Mb/s) and dividing by 54 you see about a 3x increase in speed between wireless G and wireless N. This is great for downloading files, and may be worth the $80 upgrade to you. However, a caution: Remember if your internet connection is at 5 Mb/s, that's all you'll get is 5 Mb, it does not matter if you have a 54 or a 150 Mb/s pipeline, the internet will only go at 5Mb, so you won't see any increase there.
Almost lastly, how about gigabit Ethernet and your home network speeds? Most home networks are 100 based, meaning they use Cat5 cables (a specification and what most home networks have used in the past) and that utilize up to 100 Mb/s speeds. Most routers and switches you see have been 10/100 or can handle up to 100 Mb/s in each direction.
However, Gigabit Ethernet is a 1,000 Mb/s or 1 Gb/s speed. In order to achieve this, though, you have to have everything on your home network at this speed. It will only go as fast as the slowest part. To start with you'll need a gigabit swtich or router. I purchased a gigabit switch for $25 recently with a mail-in-rebate, making it quite affordable. Then you would need to have Cat6 (not Cat5) cables. I ordered 4 of them for about $10.50, shipping included. Finally, you need to make sure your computer can handle the gigabit standard or is marked 1,000 or commonly says 10/100/1,000 or just 100/1000 meaning it can handle slower as well as the faster gigabit speeds.
So, back to the DVD example, just how fast is this? My first experience over the weekend with gigabit Ethernet was quite fast. Again, remember this will only be realized in transferring files back and forth between machines or a server, but it was fast! When going from 100 to 1000 you may not see a full 10x increase, but I had a file that copied over in 15 minutes, then I shut down, installed the gigabit switch and cables and transferred it again in less than 2 minutes!
As for the hypothetical 4.37 GB DVD instead of taking 4 minutes on the wireless N speed, it would now take just 0.61 minutes or about 37 seconds on the gigabit network, not bad!
After all that blazing speed, it made me wonder if the network will soon outpace the speed of your computer, i.e. the speed to transfer read/ write files on your hard drive? Lastly, let's examine disk speeds.
A common SATA hard drive today has the capacity to transfer up to 3 Gbytes/s, but they typically transfer at about 70 Megabytes or 560 Mbits/s. This is due to the nature of hard drives, spin-up time, seek time, and so forth. A discussion for another day. But, suffice it to say when you're dealing with a gigabit network, your slowest part now could very well be your hard drive, NOT your network! Of course, as mentioned, your network will never quite run to full capacity either with your file transfer, so perhaps it is best to consider it a "toss up" as to whether the gigabit network or the 7200 RPM modern hard drive is the weakest link in the data transfer.
Of course you could put a Solid State Drive (or SSD) in your computer. These are still relatively expensive but get rid of the "wait for the hard drive light always on" bottleneck by increasing the data rate to about 250 Gbytes or 2 Gbits/s. Now we're talking the speed of a fully functional gigabit network as it can handle (in full duplex) a 1 Gb/s download AND a 1Gb/s upload. So, theoretically, your Solid State Drive could be uploading a file to the server and simultaneously downloading a file from the server and it would be about as fast as the gigabit Ethernet it travels over.
Of course servers seldom handle just one machine connected to it. At my house I've got one newer machine and two older ones coming into it. At that point you're not concerned with drive speed but with the network. There is a 10 Gigabit standard out there, but it has not yet found its way into mainstream home use.
Below is a chart showing the DVD file transfer scenario and how long it would take to transfer over a 5 Gb/s Internet connection as well as on various wireless and wired networks and the rate at which it can transfer on a hard drive. It is a good reference to show just how fast each of the options can be, relatively speaking. Enjoy!
| DVD | 4.37 | 4,475 | 4,582,277 | 36,658,217 | |
| Example | GB | MB | K | bytes | |
| Internet | 5 Mb/s | 5,000 | 122 | ||
| Connection | bits/ sec | Minutes | |||
| Wireless | 54 Mb/s | 54,000 | 11.3 | ||
| G | Connection | bits/ sec | Minutes | ||
| Wireless | 150 Mb/s | 150,000 | 4.1 | ||
| N | Connection | bits/ sec | Minutes | ||
| 100 | 100 Mb/s | 100,000 | 6.1 | ||
| Network | Speed | bits/ sec | Minutes | ||
| 1,000 | 1 Gb/s | 1,000,000 | 0.61 | 37 | |
| Gigabit | Speed | bits/ sec | Minutes | Seconds | |
| Typical | 70 Mbytes/s | 573,440 | 1.07 | 64 | |
| Hard Drive | Speed | bits/ sec | Minutes | Seconds | |
| Solid-State | 250 Mbytes/s | 2,048,000 | 0.30 | 18 | |
| Drive | Speed | bits/ sec | Minutes | Seconds |
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