Increasing Wireless Speed - Linksys E2500

Your wired speed is probably only the speed between the computer & the router. Do an online speedtest to determine average wired speed.

The wifi speed is regulated by:
1. the adapter itself: 80211b, 80211g, 80211n
2. the wifi router; some routers have the ability to set max rates for each 80211 type. And even if have a 80211n adapter the router must support 80211n else the adapter will fall back to 80211g.
3. signal strength, interference, noise, etc. affect it too.

ISP - no matter the adapter capability, both wired and wifi cannot attain faster Internet speeds than provided by your ISP.

80211g is capable of 54 mbps ON PAPER. That's the spec. In actuality, it will max out at about 2/3 that.

80211n is capable of 600 mbps on paper. Same as other standards, in actuality you'll never get data transfers that high.

Also, in wifi, any interim wifi device will reduce the rate by about 50%. For example, if use a wifi repeater which is connected to a wifi router, the rate will be half the rate if connect directly to the wifi router.

 

The connection status, which measures the connection from the adapter to the router, is quite useless, except when t-shooting network connectivity problems.

The status may show an ethernet connection of 91 mbps or even 100 mbps. The real test is when transferring files from one computer to another on the same local network. Your transfers will never be 91 mbps or 100 mbps. There are many other factors that come into play during file transfers.

The same applies to Internet file transfers, uploading or downloading files. That rate of transfer is governed initially by your ISP, and then governed by the Web server that hosts the file(s). If your ISP provides a 25mbps download rate, and the Web server that hosts the Web pages or files has an upload rate of 10 mbps, then that's your max download rate. (remember, the server is uploading your download)

The wifi connection rate also has little use. There are other factors involved, such as link quality, interference, signal level, transmit power, encryption, etc. One can have a poor connection (1 or 2 bars on the graph) at a rate of 54mbps. The actual download rate will be much slower than 54mbps because pieces of the download get lost or go missing and must be resent by the other computer or Web server.

The rates given in the connection status are, for the most part, quite useless. The important useful statuses are: Connected, Limited or No Connectivity, Disconnected.