Why is my wireless so slow?

I recently bought a 300mbps wireless N card for my desktop and have set up as per instructions but am noticing some vastly different speeds whilst testing. I know that it wont operate fully at 300mbps due to older devices that i have connected wirelessly to the router, but should the speeds be so different cosidering wireless adapter is running at 150mbps and wired is at 100mbps?

First pic is from wireless test:

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Second is from wired test:

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Any info is appreciated as i cant seem to get my head round it :)

Kevin England Foster

Posted 2013-08-02T23:27:05.690

Reputation: 13

If you have neighbors, you may want to check what channel you're configured to use. If your neighbors are using the same or nearby channels, that will likely reduce your max speed. – jjlin – 2013-08-02T23:43:51.157

Yeh I thought that also, only one other wireless access point within range and that is using a different channel than my router. – Kevin England Foster – 2013-08-03T00:21:52.443

Answers

You can't really compare wired and wireless speeds like that. They're completely different technologies. The 100 Mbps of a wired link is nearly perfect dedicated bandwidth in each direction. The 300 Mbps of a wireless link is the maximum theoretical total bandwidth of the channel. Rarely will an actual channel carry anywhere near that much data, data in both directions comes out of that bandwidth, and dead times are needed for the channel to "change directions".

David Schwartz

Posted 2013-08-02T23:27:05.690

Reputation: 58 310

Thanks for your answer much appreciated, kind of what I was expecting to hear. So am I safe to say I won't be able to download at the same speed as I can when connected by wire? – Kevin England Foster – 2013-08-03T00:20:05.233

You might get closer with a higher-quality router. – David Schwartz – 2013-08-03T01:49:21.980

It's also worth noting that interference (or other networks in the area on overlapping channels) can cut your throughput way down as well. – Shinrai – 2013-08-03T06:09:37.713