Windows 10: Wifi vs ethernet-->wifi Bridge using router - MUCH FASTER with Bridge

Hi there

If you've a spare / old router which you can set up as a wifi bridge and connect a bit of LAN cable from Laptop into the Bridge router you'll generally get FAR better performance from even a cheap router.

Logic behind this is that most Wifi adapters are half duplex whereas a router is full duplex and throughput will be significantly better.

Another advantage is that you can still use 5 GHZ band even if your PC or whatever only can handle 2.4 GHZ wifi.

If your router doesn't have bridging facilities you can often do it by a firmware upgrade --for most routers try this :

www.dd-wrt.com | Unleash Your Router

Note --this is the Bridging router --not your main one that you use to connect to your ISP with --don't want to cause people to have inoperable boxes !!!!!.

I've found using a Router as a bridge far better than having to have loads of LAN cable all round the house --and also antennae in wifi routers are hugely better than most built in Wifi cards so you can in a lot of cases avoid extra slowdown caused by wifi extenders.


In my "man shed" -- a good 100 metres from the main house - could just about get 8 Mib/s on a very poor 2.4 GHZ wifi signal from the wifi card

Laptop now acceptable - still with 2,4 GHZ wifi but using "Bridged" method with an old EDIMAX wifi 4 port router. Around 70 Mib/s (still a lot slower by about 10X - I'm getting nearly 1Gb/s download in main house on 5 GHZ wifi --ISL has excellent Internet !!!) than in the main house but perfectly OK for streaming Football etc when friends are around and we're all drinking Beer etc -- no complaints from "the Other" about noise, cheers of "Goooooal !!!!", clearing up etc etc !!!!.

Good even for a SLOW Ping -- remember I'm over 100 metres away from my House and on 2.4 GHZ. Wifi --5GHZ not receivable at that distance.





added -- even if your PC / laptop doesn't have a LAN connector it's still worthwhile doing this with a USB-->Lan adapter -- even a USB 2 -->LAN works really well -- USB2 speed will easily handle 75 Mib/s !!! and adapter can cost as little as 6 EUR - those cheap Chinese unbranded ones work fine too.

I've had 4 simultaneous connections through that Bridge router this way -- 2 guys had laptops with no LAN cards - they used the adapters --all very happy !!!. USB"-->LAN adapter-->Lan cable-->Port on Bridge router.

Cheers
jimbo

:)

 

Unable to bridge adapters

You cannot bridge wifi and ethernet. It is an either-or situation. If you connect an ethernet cable it will take over andfwifi is not used. Unconnect it and the wifi kicks in. Bridging is for connecting routers.

 

Remote NDIS based internet sharing Device "No valid IP address" error

Make sure your connections are all Bridged network, wifi, Ethernet and then reboot your your modem router. Network and settings adapter options. If bridged redo them.

 

Hi there,
Pay attention to Units, it is very "easy" to get "confused". 70Mbps = 8,75MB/s.
And what is that Units "Mib/s"? Mega Information Binary per Second? *Cool
Cheers

 

the gain on speed, could it be because you have a "dedicated" (only 1 user) wifi connection instead of sharing with other PC´s?

 

MiB and GiB is just another way of saying MegaBytes and GigaBytes, see it now and then on various Web pages such as Wikis.

 

Well, for me that is a reason to leave at once those "Web Pages". There is various International Units Systems and I do not see why "Web Pages" should use their own Units Standard, to get people more confused or they do not real know what they talking about?

 

Hi there

75 Mibs / sec is about 9 MB/s (9 Mega BYTES/ sec) == more than enough to transmit full HD 1080p movies or even transcode HEVC H265 video (1080p -- not for 4K UHD stuff though)

From Mib/s or Gib/s just divide by 8 to get MEGABYTES or GIGABYTES / sec.

Can't understand what the confusion is here. Quite simple Router easily handles 4 lots of connections all doing 75 Mib/s or around 8 MB/s for each wired connection to the Bridge.

Even Netflix recommendation for streaming is a minimum of :

•5.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for HD quality (40 Mib/s)
•25 Megabits per second - Recommended for Ultra HD quality (100 Mib/s)

So well within recommended spec here for full HD sports streaming. And of course we aren't all simultaneously streaming Netflix videos. !!! Just 4 blokes watching Football from ONE connection and drinking plenty of booze.

Main object was to show that by using a Bridge you could even get a decent AND FASTER connection a LONG way from your primary router when you might not even have a normal wifi connection at all and is certainly a lot faster than a simple bog standard laptop's wifi card.

Cheers
jimbo

 

My main WiFi router is in my basement. On the second floor of my house I have one of these:
Linksys RE6500 AC1200 Dual-Band Wireless Range Extender

I get the best of both worlds on my second floor - I have Gigabit Ethernet ports and full WiFi speed. The advantage to this over a standard router for WiFi bridging is that I get the full WiFi speed out of it in addition to the Ethernet ports. When I connect to the WiFi extender via WiFi, it uses the opposite band for the bridge so the throughput speed is not cut in half as it would with a standard router being used as a bridge which would normally use the same band for both the client and the bridge.

 

I got curious of the use of Mbs and Mib/s in this discussion. Here is a article from Wikipedia on its history and adoption.

In simple terms the M is a decimal prefix based on the power of 10 while Mi is a binary prefix based on the power of 2.


Binary prefix - Wikipedia





After reading the article I need a drink. *Drink1

 

Hi there

The bottleneck is actually in the wifi card in the LAPTOP / other computer connected via Wifi. Cheap extenders also are half duplex if you connect to them via wifi directly from laptop / computer so you really are restricting potential throughput. Wifi cards have to SEND and receive of course - with LAN you have cables for full duplex and a decent router used as a bridge will send / receive on different circuits making full duplex operation possible.

Of course it all depends on the quality of the hardware but in order to keep costs down and components small the wifi cards in laptops generally only work in half duplex mode.

Test it and see -- if you don't have a LAN adapter on the computer a really cheap (around 5 EUR) unbranded plastic USB 2 one will work fine. USB 2 speed will still be faster than a typical half duplex wifi computer card - even on an expensive laptop. If you have FAST 5 GHZ wifi then a USB3 -->LAN adapter will give better results -- 5GHZ full duplex wifi can get to not far off 1 Gb/s at maximum !!!.

if you can connect your computer wirelessly to the Ethernet ports (even using a USB2-->Lan adapter) then some decent extenders will work too -- my experience is that most extenders only have one Ethernet port which is meant to be connected to LAN which is connected to the main router / cable box. The cheaper ones also only have 2 antennae -usually fairly small and range is not very great --certainly wouldn't work over 100 metres from my main router.

A decent router definitely has full duplex so a bridge generally will be better than typical extenders -- of course you can use a lot of old routers in "Extender mode" also if you need extra wifi availability.

For me the Bridge route was the preferred option - especially as I had the relevant kit and didn't have to go out and buy something new.

I tested a laptop with Wifi on 2.4 Ghz band at the edge of wifi reception -- had to bring it to about 35 metres from house and got a speed approx. 35 % less than using the bridge. Compare this speed with my previous post - Bridge also using 2.4 GHZ band (too far away for 5 GHZ band)

Wifi card speed

Wifi card in laptop is Intel Dual band Wireless AC 7265 so not a "rubbish" one.






Bridge speed with really cheap and nasty plastic USB2==>LAN adapter (not USB 3 !!)





On 5 GHZ at the very edge of reception wifi was appalling - down to 25 Mbps ! Barely registering on the wifi signal on the taskbar ! although excellent nearer the source so if you DO use 5 GHZ it's fine unless a weak signal --then 2.4 GHZ is better !!!! Didn't know that -- shows it's always worth doing actual tests rather than reading tech specs.

@Phone Man -- in this case UNITS don't really matter in this case as it's a COMPARISON test -- so long as the measurements are the same that's all that matters -- units could be in Dinosaur Eggs for all that matters !!!!!

Of course confusion always in units but most people use OOKLA for internet speed test so that should give some sense of proper comparisons.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Some references for USB20/LAN/802.11:
USB2.0 -->LAN 1000TBase = 40MB/s > 320Mbps
802.11AC - 866Mbps > 72MB/s . in a P2P connection will be 36MB/s or 288Mbps (that will Display in Testing)

The most important is at which Speed Devices connecting, that means which 802.11 protocol they actually using.
Included in 802.11AC are many possible connections as low as 200 Mbps > 8,3MB/s.
All the different Protocols and Data Rates are very well described in Intel FAQ : Different WiFi Protocols and Data Rates

 

Ho there
@Adalwar --thanks for the info

I was only testing in a "Real live" situation so results are what I got -- other people will do better or worse depending on the equipment they use and applications they are running

I just needed acceptable connections for us in a Shed a good 100 metres away from the house where we could use Wifi rather than set up an access point with a 4G phone (another possible solution - but will eat up your 4G data allowance -- especially if streaming movies / sports !!!).

The point though is still valid that a lot of wifi adapters in Laptops are only Half duplex and if using cheap extenders (also often half duplex) you really will cut the throughput down even though the theoretical spec shows much higher rates possible. Decent Routers are genrally Full duplex so can give far better performance when used like I'm using them than simply via a bog standard extender even if it had the range !!!. I'm working at about the limit of reception - normally people will have far stronger signals !!!.

We used a ROKU stick BTW to capture the streams from the remote Server -- another issue but I'm very impressed with those Roku streaming sticks -- Googlecast also good for this type of stuff.

We can't do 4K UHD TV / Video streaming yet --too much DRM around and I'd have to lay LAN cable to the shed to get required speed -- might do that sometime !!!!.

Anyway thanks for the info.

 

@jimbo45
I did a correction about USB2.0 --> LAN, the 40MB/s > 320Mbps are related to the max "real" speed of a 1000Mbps adapter on USB2.

Now, I have an Intel Chip set and there are some settings that may improve WiFi speed:
- in Power Plan> Advanced power Settings, there are Settings for Wifi adapter, setting to "Max Performance" may Help
- There are also settings for PCI Express, Power Managment - turning it off may also increase Power.
Have a look if you have those settings available and try them.

EDIT: In Intel AC-7260 Adapter (Device Manager>Advanced) there is a setting for u-apsd , turning it ON will slow down dramatically the speed when connected to some routers.