Belkin 802.11g Wireless DSL/Cable Gateway Router - Testing
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There are not a whole lot of tests you can run to compare wireless routers, but I wanted to figure out how long it took to transfer a massive file, and see how close to the theoretical maximum transfer rate this router can get. The computer was roughly 15 feet away from the router, in direct sight with nothing the signal had to pass through other than the air. I took the movie "Wimbledon" and ripped a 1:1 copy, totaling 6,334 MB in size. This file was transferred by dragging and dropping the file to a shared folder on the other computer. I started with the wired transfer; both computers are connected to the router by network cable. For the wireless connection, I made the computer send the file through the wireless router.
The wireless movie transfer took nearly 50 minutes, whereas it took a mere 15 minutes to transfer via wired connection. 802.11g is the fastest certified speed, and this is still very far behind its wired counterpart. It's not very encouraging if you need to transfer large files to a different PC on a regular basis. There was no "turbo" mode, or any other setting which would allow any faster speeds. Some companies offer 108Mbps, which is double the speed of the regular 802.11g, but this router is only straight 54Mbps. Hopefully sometime in 2005 we will see 802.11n, which promises even more range and faster speed.
I also streamed video both ways from PC to PC to see if I could over saturate the router's bandwidth. I used two of the WMV HD movies avabile from Microsoft: "Step into Liquid" and "Magic of Flight." Both of these movies were 1080i HD format. I had one computer wired to the router, and the other connected wirelessly, roughly 15 feet from the router. I was very surprised that the router could keep up with the demand the movies. In the first five seconds I did lose a few frames on the the wired computer, but after that it was smooth sailing.
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