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I am considering setting up a wired network for part of my house, but because of the layout of my house, I am unable to connect the wired part directly to the wireless router/cable modem. I'd love to be able to cable the whole house, but it be far to expensive to do it correctly.

My question is: If I connect two or three computers via gigabit Ethernet, will I be throttling the connection speed by tunneling that connection through a single wireless adapter? Would the connection be unusable for HD content stream if two of of the PCs were streaming HD video? (And possibly a third.)

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We don't know the speed of your connection, but it is most likely slower than 54mb/s, which is the speed at which Wireless G can work (unless it's Super G, but that's a different story).

So, let's imagine a perfect world, and use some numbers to make everything make sense.

If your whole house was wired for GigE, and it was all connected to the modem, and your net connection was 10mb/s.... the fact that your house is wired GigE isn't going to make a difference, when compared to if your house was all wired 10/100... 100mb/s. In fact, even if every computer was connected via Wireless G at 54mb/s, you would still be splitting that simple 10mb/s connection with 4 computers.

Let me put it another way. The only way that the Wireless G connection would throttle your internet connection, would be if your internet connection was FASTER than 54mb/s, considering you want to pipe the connection to three of the computers through that wireless G adapter.

I'm not addressing file transfers along your network to other computers on your network.

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  • Thanks.... I was kinda thinking that, but wasn't sure. Is it worth it to spend the extra $15 to make it 10/100/1000??
    – Usta
    May 26, 2012 at 23:34
  • @Usta if you want the faster transfer of files between all the computers on the GigE network, then go for it. But it's not going to improve your download speeds from the internet. Is it worth it? How often do you move files from one computer to another? And, just to put in a point of reference, you can watch non-streaming AVI files and such just fine over 54mb/s or 100mb/s.
    – Bon Gart
    May 26, 2012 at 23:38
  • What if I threw in a domain? 'cause that was one of the main reason's I was considering switching to wired (And because price-wise it'd be about the same to upgrade my semi-dying wi-fi router) LAN based file transfer is not really a huge deal, but it does happen occasionally. I'm kinda leaning right now towards the 10/100 And I think my internet speed is is 20 or 25 mbps (So technically Wireless G should be enough, but network speeds typically don't reach their max speed in most cases just because nothing is 100% efficient
    – Usta
    May 26, 2012 at 23:44
  • @Usta More than Technically, since you should be getting solid 54mb/s (if not fiddle with the placement of the router and computer with the adapter until you do. I can understand if you don't get the whole 25mb/s from your net connection, as you say because it's not always 100%. So, domain or no domain, you'll be looking at sharing your 20-25mb/s across 4 computers, even with the 54mb/s pipe in the beginning of your home network.
    – Bon Gart
    May 27, 2012 at 1:02

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