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Last post Author Topic: More speed/bandwidth from an 802.11n laptop<-->WiFi Router/Modem connection?  (Read 37356 times)

4wd

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IME, it's always been very bad to have more than one NIC connecting to the same network, (eg. wired and wireless, 2 x wired, etc).  The system ends up getting confused about where to send things.

Probably requires some fiddly settings to get the multiple connections to load share with each other or you can use something like Speedify or Dispatch.

40hz

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IME, it's always been very bad to have more than one NIC connecting to the same network, (eg. wired and wireless, 2 x wired, etc).  The system ends up getting confused about where to send things.

Probably requires some fiddly settings to get the multiple connections to load share with each other or you can use something like Speedify or Dispatch.

Using multiple combined NICs is usually referred to as "teaming." (In the NIX world it's also called interface "bonding.}

NIC teaming is not a feature built into Windows 7. There's an "intermediate" driver that needs to be installed to allow teaming. So getting it to work depends on the brand of NIC (and driver) installed - plus a network switch that supports NIC teaming. I know Intel supports teaming on some of their NICs. There are likely other brands that also support it. But I'm not familar with them. (I've been told Broadcom has teaming support for some of its adapters.)

FWIW I've never seen NIC teaming done on the PC level. From my experience it's purely a "server thing." 8)

So...is there anybody out there in DocoLand teaming NICs on their PC or laptop? :huh:
« Last Edit: November 05, 2014, 08:54 AM by 40hz »

SeraphimLabs

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IME, it's always been very bad to have more than one NIC connecting to the same network, (eg. wired and wireless, 2 x wired, etc).  The system ends up getting confused about where to send things.

Probably requires some fiddly settings to get the multiple connections to load share with each other or you can use something like Speedify or Dispatch.

Using multiple combined NICs is usually referred to as "teaming." (In the NIX world it's also called interface "bonding.}

NIC teaming is not a feature built into Windows 7. There's an "intermediate" driver that needs to be installed to allow teaming. So getting it to work depends on the brand of NIC (and driver) installed - plus a network switch that supports NIC teaming. I know Intel supports teaming on some of their NICs. There are likely other brands that also support it. But I'm not familar with them. (I've been told Broadcom has teaming support for some of its adapters.)

FWIW I've never seen NIC teaming done on the PC level. From my experience it's purely a "server thing." 8)

So...is there anybody out there in DocoLand teaming NICs on their PC or laptop? :huh:

Note: Windows 7 DOES include the ability to set adapter priority for multiple interfaces.

Using this capability you can set it to use a cabled in connection in preference to the wifi, which makes it so that you can actually be connected to the wifi and the cable simultaneously without issue.I have my laptop set this way, and can plug into the cable for more speed without having to turn the wifi off. The default priority in windows is backwards of course, preferring the wifi over the cable for some strange reason.

What you don't want to do is bridge the nicks in windows when you have more than one connected to the same network, as this results in a layer 2 loop that can and will bring down the whole network.

As for wifi not reaching full speed, a lot of times this has to do with signal to noise ratio. Even though it is getting a strong enough signal, there's too much interference for it to really be heard. OpenWRT has the capability to display the SNR on a per device basis, which is really convenient for troubleshooting situations like this. It also shows transmit and recieve data rates, again on a per device basis.

One last thing to check- you are using WPA2 encryption correct? Wireless N will not exceed wireless G speeds unless it is encrypted using WPA2 or better.


As for IPv6, most of the time it does not matter. However in some cases your system will get a valid IPv6 address that does not have a usable route to the rest of the world. If this happens it will try to use that address since Windows prefers IPv6 over IPv4 by default, and the result is a huge slowdown in browsing performance because it has to wait for the IPv6 attempt to time out before falling back to IPv4.

You could just disable IPv6 until your ISP implements it the rest of the way, or alternately you could change the IP priority so that Windows will use IPv4 in preference to IPv6- eliminating the risk of slowdown without removing your ability to experiment with ipv6.

40hz

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Note: Windows 7 DOES include the ability to set adapter priority for multiple interfaces.

Excellent point! Setting interface device priority is an underutilized feature in Windows. :Thmbsup:

But just to be clear, "NIC teaming" is not the same thing as setting interface priorities. Nor is it the same thing as "bridging" them. Bridging is strictly an OS specific software solution. Teaming is hardware/driver based solution.

Not that it really matters for most scenarios. Plug a single 1GB NIC into the usual internet access point and you have more LAN bandwidth capacity than even the most liberal ISP will deliver through their WAN link. If you are into very heavy media streaming (from a server) over an internal network, implementing a teaming solution might be worth looking into.

IMHO bridging stopped making very much sense once we moved from 10Mb interface cards to 100Mb; and virtually no sense at all after the advent of 1GB cards. But that's me. YMMV.


Stoic Joker

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If you are into very heavy media streaming (from a server) over an internal network, implementing a teaming solution might be worth looking into.

Assuming that they're frequently streaming to multiple endpoints at the same time. Because teaming 2 1GB NICs does not result in a single 2GB pipe, it results in 2 1GB pipes that are available at a single IP Address. So any given transfer will have to select a specific singular 1GB electrical path ... It just does so automagically and leaves the other one open for the next guy.

4wd

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FWIW I've never seen NIC teaming done on the PC level. From my experience it's purely a "server thing." 8)

Forgot about Teaming, this was actually pretty common 4-7 years ago on nVidia based high-end motherboards, aimed at gamers who wanted the lowest lag they could get at LAN nights, or game/media sever, etc.

We had two people at our LAN group who used it, one a nForce4 MB, the other a nVidia 790i based MB, (IIRC).  Two 1Gb ports that could be teamed.

Sorry, I was originally talking more about when you inadvertently make two connections to the same network, (still happens at our LAN night).
« Last Edit: November 05, 2014, 04:34 PM by 4wd »

40hz

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^I wasn't aware that bridging or teaming could reduce lag (ping?) time for gaming. I was always under the impression it couldn't. But then again the game server and client machines in this scenario are within the LAN and not accessing the WAN so I suppose (under certain conditions) it might be possible.... but I'd want to try using a smarter network switch before I went that route.

But still...guess you learn something new every day!  :) :Thmbsup:

40hz

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It just does so automagically

ren-and-stimpy-gif.gif

Bingo! And that's the beauty of it. ;D

4wd

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^I wasn't aware that bridging or teaming could reduce lag (ping?) time for gaming. I was always under the impression it couldn't. But then again the game server and client machines in this scenario are within the LAN and not accessing the WAN so I suppose (under certain conditions) it might be possible.... but I'd want to try using a smarter network switch before I went that route.

We couldn't afford smart network switches back then  ;D

Seemed to work though, less lag was noticeable when the guys who were running the game server had teaming enabled ... or maybe we were all plastered by then and it didn't seem to matter  ;D

Stoic Joker

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^Okay, so if the game/media server is servicing a high enough number of clients then it would start to lag the connections (pings included) as a single NIC reached its max. So teaming in the second (etc.) NIC would spread the load/love around enough to get it off its knees.

Makes sense to me.

40hz

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^I wasn't aware that bridging or teaming could reduce lag (ping?) time for gaming. I was always under the impression it couldn't. But then again the game server and client machines in this scenario are within the LAN and not accessing the WAN so I suppose (under certain conditions) it might be possible.... but I'd want to try using a smarter network switch before I went that route.

We couldn't afford smart network switches back then  ;D


Apologies. I've been spending OPM  way too long. :-[ ;)


Seemed to work though, less lag was noticeable when the guys who were running the game server had teaming enabled ... or maybe we were all plastered by then and it didn't seem to matter  ;D

Works either way. I'd call it a win! ;D :Thmbsup: