I agree with DWalla.

WTF? No gigabit??? 

I would be placing orders for at least three right now if it had gigabit!

WHY???? ARGH!!! >:O!!!
*explodes*

I’ve been asking this question around the Net and what I’m told, but don’t understand, is 100 Mbps wired is not the same as 100 Mbps via WiFi.

I don’t get it, but the people who seem to know what they are talking about aren’t worried about this.

100 Mbps is up to around 8 MBps, right? That’s over twice the throughput needed to play HDV footage.

My Internet provider gives me 7 Mbps.

Do you guys know more? I certainly don’t.

100Mbps is 100Mbps… wired or wireless… there is no difference. The data rate is identical. Yes it’s true that you will mostly likely never see true 600Mbps throughput on your wireless… but 200-400Mbps will probably be the norm.

We should ask the “experts” online if 20MPH on my mountain bike is faster or slower than 20MPH in my car.

You are comparing two distinct data transport media: wired and wireless Ethernet (802.11 vs. 802.3). In wired, the spec refers to nominal transmission speed with minimal performance degradation elements, comparatively. However, in the wireless medium the transmission speeds are greatly affected by their operating environment and the accommodation of a mixture of clients. The 200 Mbit expected transmission speed of the “n” spec is, I believe, pristene (best-case). Because the medium is an air gap, when put into practice the only way is down, so to speak… There will be many sources of performance interference (i.e., distance, electrical, rf, etc.), as well as any slowdown caused by the existence of other client specs in the mix (i.e., 802.11a, b and g). So, realistically, you can expect to see the wireless nominal 200 Mbit, play nicely with the 100 Mbit wired.

Right… but though you may be wiling to split hairs between 100Mbps and 200Mbps throughput.... when I’m transferring 20GB of footage via wireless from a client.... 100Mbps difference is painful.

But what he’s saying is the actual throughput you will get is the same as 100 ethernet.

I have a hard time believing that Apple would put out an 802.11n base station that can’t give you transfers at 802.11n speed.

hmmm… well I’ve checked with a few network engineer friends of mine and they disagree. They say that in their experience with Pre-N routers that 802.11n is faster than 100Mbps ethernet on a scale of 2-3x.

It’s interesting that Linksys also has an 802.11n router that does not come with gigabit ethernet.

http://www.mdofpc.com/onlinestore/linksys-w rt300n-300mbps-80211n-draftn-4port-cabledsl-wire less-router-p-912565.html

Yes… but Netgear offers 802.11n routers in either 100BT or GigE configurations. I guess for the people who are less concerned about the pipeline being choked… well.. the 100BT is fine… but for people who want the full benefit of the 802.11n they will opt for the GigE version.

What’s the full benefit? They are saying this 802.11n router is 300 Mbps and it has 100 Base T. How can it be 300 Mbps with 100 Base T?

I’m referring to the Netgear 802.11n routers..... for those who don’t care about choking their bandwidth on the Ethernet side… well… they can opt for the cheaper 100BT solution… however… those who wish to take advantage of all the bandwidth of 802.11n… they will choose Netgear’s Gigabit version so they get the full benefit of 802.11n’s higher bandwidth.

But the one that supposedly chokes bandwidth states you get 300 Mbps. Isn’t that the full benefit?

And this bit is interesting from Linksys:

ith the Linksys Wireless-N Broadband Router at the center of your home or office network, you can share a high-speed Internet connection, files, printers, and multi-player games, and run media-intensive applications at faster than 10/100 wired network speeds, without the hassle of stringing wires!

It seems this isn’t as simple as “100Mbps is 100Mbps… wired or wireless… there is no difference”.

Another 802.11n router without gigabit ethernet:
http://www.easttrades.com/dhdir625.html

300Mbps WIRELESS!!! sheesh… sure… you get the 300Mbps on the wireless… but connect a WIRED machine via 100BT and you are then limited to the 100Mbps throughput of the 100BT! Crikey… here’s the math plain and simple: 300Mbps wireless sends 300Mbps of data to the 100BT ethernet… that ethernet port is only capable of sending/receiving 100Mbps of data. So the data stream is reduced to 100Mbps to ANY computer attached via ethernet… aka WIRED. The reverse is also true. Computer attached to the ethernet can only send to the wireless computer at the 100Mbps speed because that is the maximum throughput of that port! With that being said… two computers running 802.11n WIRELESS will get the full 802.11n benefit when communicating with each other. So what is happening is that any computer wired to the port via ethernet is getting screwed.

Show me 100 802.11n routers with 10/100BT and I’ll show you 100 routers that are screwing wired machines on bandwidth.

You can calm down. I’m simply questioning what’s going on here. You started off saying there was no difference between wireless and wired and now I’ve read that there are all kinds of things that affect the speed of wireless.

Let me ask you something—what’s the point of a base station if every computer on your LAN has an 802.11n card?

Again, this is the copy of that router:

ith the Linksys Wireless-N Broadband Router at the center of your home or office network, you can share a high-speed Internet connection, files, printers, and multi-player games, and run media-intensive applications at faster than 10/100 wired network speeds, without the hassle of stringing wires!

How do you share Internet, files, printers, and play games at faster than 100 Base T with 802.11n using that router?

It’s a router with ethernet ports. That’s the point - those 100 Base T ports. If I didn’t have wires, I wouldn’t have the router, would I? I’d just pass files between two computers with 802.11n capability.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,166 8063,00.asp

In testing we found the Belkin’s performance simply unparalleled. On our wireless testing obstacle course, simulating a real-world office environment, we measured throughput of 40.7 Mbps at 60 feet from the router (where 802.11g products typically deliver 15 Mbps). And at the 160-foot mark, where other products struggle to deliver 1 Mbps, the Belkin unit was still going strong at 8.9 Mbps.

OK.... so here’s the point… many people have been trying to claim that the 100Mbps ethernet port is faster than 100Mbps wireless. What I’m illustrating is that 100Mbps is 100Mbps period regardless of wired or wireless.

So, if you have a 300Mbps wireless signal being fed to a 100Mpbs ethernet port, you are then bogged down at the ethernet port.... thus losing all the advantage of having a 300Mbps feed except when going wireless to wireless.

So yes… you are correct… if you are running strictly a wireless setup, then you will get all the throughput it can muster. However, if you are trying to use the ethernet ports to share with wired machines, the wired machines will be at a heavy disadvantage because the genius at R&D;opted to put in 100BT instead of 1000BT.

I realize a cup of water is a cup of water. That’s not really the issue because, with wireless especially, these devices aren’t getting anywhere close to their specified maximum throughput. That’s why I posted that review of an 802.11n router that got 40.7 Mpbs, which was “unparalleled” speed, according to PC Mag.

The whole purpose of a router is to mix the wired computers with the wireless computers. So the fact that so many companies are selling 802.11n routers with 100 Base T ethernet makes me think that it’s not an obviously boneheaded mistake.

So I went C|Net and did a search for “802.11n router” and found several reviews of 802.11n routers. Every single one I’ve seen so far comes with 10/100 ethernet. The fastest benchmark they have is around 93 Mbps.

The NETGEAR WNR854T has gigabit ethernet. C|Net hasn’t benchmarked it yet but there are a few reader reviews and one guy said he only got 75 Mbps and stated that this was lower than what he got with the 10/100 ethernet version.

I went to NETGEAR and looked at the WNR834M router. It advertises up to 300 Mbps. It’s 10/100 ethernet too.
http://reviews.cnet.com/RangeMax_Next_Wirel ess_Router_Gigabit_Edition/4505-3319_7-31841158. html

I’ve searched the Net for a while now looking at reviews and I haven’t found a wireless router that goes over 100 Mbps in benchmarking. It looks like 802.11n offers better range and higher speeds at greater ranges (your speed goes down the farther away you are), but I haven’t seen anything get over 100 Mbps, let alone 200 Mbps or higher.

This may be a completely bone-headed decision on Apple’s part. They’ve made many in the past. But 9 out of 10 802.11n routers I find on the Net come with 10/100 ethernet and not gigabit ethernet.