Wi-Fi Transfer speed

[slaughteredlamb]

Perhaps one for the Mac boys & girls but maybe this is a router issue?

Anyway, I've owned an iMac for around 4 years and this has a built in Wireless G 'card' which connects to my Wireless G router (in the same room about 1.5m away with no obstructions in the way) and this works perfectly.

Yesterday I bought a new MacBook Pro which has Wireless N but clearly I can only use it at Wireless G speeds. Again this connects to my router (about 1m away with direct line of sight) perfectly no problems at all.

Part of the reason for buying the MacBook is that the Mrs & I are very sad people and like genealogy and use a program called MacFamilyTree on the iMac to build our family tree but we now need to take that tree with us when we visit research centers etc. Lugging an iMac with us wasn't feasible so thanks to Mr. Visa we bought the MacBook. This means that we need to copy the family tree database file from the iMac to the MacBook and vica versa but this file is currently nearly 4GB in size.

Last night I used the program Chronosync to synchronise the two files between both Macs with it set to simply copy the newest version of the file over the oldest in either direction. This worked but it took 1hr 20mins to copy. That seems very slow to me. By my calculations, over Wireless G, it should have taken closer to 20mins. Any ideas why it might be taking so long? Although I've used a Mac for 4 years I've never had two to network together so don't know if there is something in OSX I need to enable or disable or if there is something on the router I need to enable/disable.

[Steve Lampkins]

By my calculations, over Wireless G, it should have taken closer to 20mins.

Was that using the theoretical max speeds?

[slaughteredlamb]

That was taking the max theoretical and reducing it by around 60%

[JasonD]

4(GB) * 1024 / 1.8 (MB/s) / 60 (seconds in a minute) * 2 (imac to router to macbook) = 75 minutes.

I can't be bothered to actually do that calculation so my result is an estimate but it shouldn't be too far off.

I don't know if 1.8MB/s is particularly good or bad but that is what I usually get.

[familychoice]

The MBP I had worked superbly using wifi, much better than our other laptops.

[slaughteredlamb]

4(GB) * 1024 / 1.8 (MB/s) / 60 (seconds in a minute) * 2 (imac to router to macbook) = 75 minutes.

I can't be bothered to actually do that calculation so my result is an estimate but it shouldn't be too far off.

I don't know if 1.8MB/s is particularly good or bad but that is what I usually get.

Doh! I'd forgotten to calculate from iMac to router and router to macbook! I was just going from iMac to Macbook 

[robwhizz]

If your 2 devices are in line of sight to the router, why not just plug in a couple of patch cables? You'll transfer 4GB in about 10 mins.

[Steve Lampkins]

Or even USB hard drive swapping would be quicker.

[slaughteredlamb]

Yeah I don't really want to go with the wired route as it will mean running cables over sofas and across tables which as we may need to do this 4-5 times a week is going to get very dull very quickly. USB drives are possible but there is the hassle of getting power to the drive and I can't afford a bus powered drive at the moment. I may play with using memory sticks and see if that is a better option.

[Matt]

8GB memory sticks are nothing to buy, but just make sure you always have a backup.

Tried looking at powerline adapters? creates a wired connection through plug sockets, no need for wireless or wires. About £40 on ebuyer.

I use them here, and I was running a transfer of 2GB the yesterday backing up a clients PC and got 5mb from it, and thats going through two routers as well.