Throughput Speed

[mrudling]

I was just wondering how fast can an 11mb wireless connection actually transfer data?

Also how much of a difference does distance make, if the signal strength and quality are still high?

Finally what is the ideal (realistic) signal strength and quality status that we should aim for to get good throughput and reliability?

 

[daffy]

Max speed you'll get is around 4mbit/s

If the card says its connected at 11mbit, then thats as good as its going to get.
If you start transfering data and you notice that it drops to 5.5 or 2, then you need to improve.

Try running a continuous ping, and if there are periodic high pings spikes, that could also indicate that the rate is jumping, and you'll need to work on it a bit.

 

[mrudling]

BTW, the link is 32km, los.

How much of a difference does distance make if the sig and quality are still good?

tx

 

[daffy]

That depends on the radio that you're using and the capabilities in the software.

Over a link of that distance, you will start to see timing issues. Where a packet needs to be retransmitted because it didn't arrive "in time".

Keep in mind, that these "in time" values are specified for short range, indoor use. So over a long distance, these packets will almost definately need retransmissions.

In Mikrotik RouterOS, it dynamically determines the ack timeouts for a link, which does generally increase the throughput on long distance links.