I am looking for ways to bump up the transfer speed between my local computers on my home network. I have 3 desktop computers and they are all running Windows. One uses wired connection and the other two are using wireless connection.
Desktop 1
- Wired connection
- 100 Mbps NIC (integrated, Realtek)
- Cable type is Cat 5e
- Cable length is < 20 meters
- Windows Vista
Desktop 2
- Wireless connection
- 300 Mbps NIC (USB 2.0, D-Link DWA-160 dual-band @ 5 GHz, Atheros chipset)
- 1000 Mbps NIC (integrated, Realtek, not in use)
- 1000 Mbps NIC (integrated, Realtek, not in use)
- Proximity to router is < 10 meters
- Windows Vista
Desktop 3
- Wireless connection
- 300 Mbps NIC (USB 2.0, D-Link DWA-160 dual-band @ 5 GHz, Ralink chipset)
- 1000 Mbps NIC (integrated, Realtek, not in use)
- Proximity to router is < 20 meters
- Windows 8
Router
- D-Link DIR-825
- Wireless N
- 1000 Mbps integrated switch
- Both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands are enabled
- DD-WRT firmware
- WPA2/AES encryption mode
I have a 10 Mbps dedicated Fiber-LAN connection to the Internet. That's exactly 1.25 MB/s. I can achieve this speed when I download something from the web, and beyond that. I can easily download at 1.3 MB/s from either one of the computers. I can upload with the same speed, and usually exceed that and peak out at about 1.7 MB/s.
Now, when I transfer a 250 MB file between two computers locally I can only get about 3 MB/s on average. How can I bump this up to at least 12.5 MB/s? As you can see, two computers are Gigabit-Ethernet capable, and one is only Fast-Ethernet capable. If they all operate at the slowest speed available, that would be 100 Mbps. I understand that this is only theoretical speed. But what's preventing me from achieving at least half of that? That would be 12.5 MB/s, and I would be happy with that.