Pulled eFingers:

Louise —

Excellent!

Ngan —

"the speed is 1 Mb/second (about 0.5 MB/minute)" wow, that's fast..or..urggg...slow???

hitch Hiker —

Eric,

Good info, thanks.

Not sure how you came up with 0.5MB/minute. 0.5 MB/ minute is extremely slow, simple dial up speed is higher than that today.

Assuming 1Mb/s is correct, 7.5MB/minute is the right answer.

Here is my calc:

1Mbit/s=2^20bits/s=1048576bits/s

1048576/8=131072 bytes/sec

131072/2^20=0.125MB/s

0.125 x 60 =7.5MB/minutes

Ngan,

yes 1Mb/s is really fast, most of today laptops don't even support it and fall into the lower speed of 100 Mb/s.
If you check your wireless speed, I am sure you are running a max speed of 108Mb/s or less.

Eric —

You're correct...

(1,000,000 b/sec) / (~10 b/B) = 100,000 B/sec
100,000 B/sec = 100 kB/sec = 0.1 MB/sec
(0.1 MB/sec) * 60 (sec/minute) = 6 MB/min

I'll edit the entry to insert the correct number.

BTW, 6 MB/min is just about what I get with Comcast.

Ngan —

Mine is 54Mb/s...and this is slower than 1Mb/s?? I'm confused =(

Eric —

For those interested, Google is using the Tropos 5210 Wireless Router.

This is an interesting read. Some of the comments talk about the Tropos network architecture and its shortcomings.

hitch Hiker —

Ngan,
54Mb/s is what you get with today's wireless home routers.
I have seen some in the market that can go up to 108 Mb/s.
to get the idea, 1Mb/s is 10 times faster than 108Mb/s and almost 20 times faster than your 54Mb/s. Old dial up connections usually ran at 5 or 6 kb/s (hence the name 56K!)

Now, having an access point of 1Mb/s does not gaurantee that you get to benefit from the faster speed. Currently the ethernet chip in your laptop is capable of 10/ 100 Mb/s.
New laptops come with 10/100/1000 (1Mb)/s hardware. You know what this means? upgrading to a new lap top!
But don't worry, 54Mb/s is still ok, also connection speed depends how far you are from the access point.

Eric —

1Mb/s is 10 times faster than 108Mb/s

How is 1 Mb/sec > 108 Mb/sec ?

I'm also confused.

steve —

I'm confused as well.

802.11G wireless access points operate up to 54Mb/s (mega-bits per second.) That's the amount of bandwidth that you have on the LAN (local area network.) In other words, 2 computers connected to your 802.11g wireless access point could transfer files to EACHOTHER at rates up to 54Mb/s.

The amount of bandwidth you have to access the Internet is a completely different question. Most cable providers offer users between 1 and 2 Mb/s of shared bandwidth. A T1 offers 1.544 Mb/s of bandwidth to whatever you are connecting to on the WAN (wide area network.) This could be connected to the Internet, a private server farm, etc.

It looks like Google is offering 1Mb/s of shared bandwidth on the LAN (between the access point and your computer.) This is considerably less than you would get from an 802.11g device on the LAN side, but it won't matter to you. What will matter to you is how many people will have access to each node, and the amount of WAN bandwidth google has from each router to their campus. My guess is that they would use a microwave T1, or 1.544 Mb/s.

Hope this helped.

steve —

Check my last response... the Tropos is an 802.11g/b device so it does offer 54Mb/s on the LAN. This is still irrelavent to you, because you will be limited by the bandwidth on the WAN, just like you are with cable.

hitch Hicker —

Eric,

I got confused too, mixed 1Gb/s with 1Mb/s.
On the other hand steve is right. Tropos are 802.11g/b, so they shoud provide 54Mb/s. 1Mb/s is too slow, did you mean the sensetivity of the router?

Ngan,

Good news, most laptops are capable of 802.11g, that is 54Mb/s, so for now no upgrades needed.

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