Will this slow down my Inet?

My wife and I run both our computers off the house Internet connection
(not a real big deal, I know). She runs off the Wifi and I run Ethernet
since the modem and router are in my office.
If I start to run my computer off the wifi too, is there much of a
chance that I will note a fall off in WiFi response. We both use it
mainly for web surfing, and e-mail. What information would be needed
to help?
K
--
America is at that awkward stage. It's too late
to work within the system, but too early to shoot
the *******s."-- Claire Wolfe

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 09:37:08 -0400, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>My wife and I run both our computers off the house Internet connection
>(not a real big deal, I know). She runs off the Wifi and I run Ethernet
>since the modem and router are in my office.
> If I start to run my computer off the wifi too, is there much of a
>chance that I will note a fall off in WiFi response. We both use it
>mainly for web surfing, and e-mail. What information would be needed
>to help?

I think for the most part you'd be fine. The reason I say that is
because both web browsing and email are typically 'bursty'
applications, meaning they leave your Internet connection mostly idle
in between short bursts of activity.

Take web browsing, for example. Your Internet connection is idle and
you click a link to request a page, generating a tiny spike of traffic
in the outbound direction. In response, you get a bigger spike of
traffic in the inbound direction as the page and its contents are
delivered, but then the Internet connection goes idle again while you
read the page that you requested.

With email, no significant traffic is generated unless and until you
either send or retrieve email. The amount of traffic will depend on
the specific email and its contents, but it's usually just a burst of
traffic and then the Internet connection goes idle again for some
number of minutes, depending on how you've configured your email
clients.

If other users are doing basically the same things as you are, their
bursts of traffic will sometimes (many times?) occur during your idle
times, and vice versa, and will therefore be mostly unnoticeable. If
the events line up on top of each other, you may notice a slowdown,
but I'd expect it to be short lived.

Where two or more people can run into contention issues is where one
or more are doing big downloads or using bittorrent or streaming, for
example, all things that use bandwidth for extended periods of time.
Bursty applications generally work well together, so I'd expect you to
be fine.

In article <6u7a285ikkvcqug71io9n6jnpluke9pp06@4ax.com>,
Char Jackson <none@none.invalid> wrote:


>
> Where two or more people can run into contention issues is where one
> or more are doing big downloads or using bittorrent or streaming, for
> example, all things that use bandwidth for extended periods of time.
> Bursty applications generally work well together, so I'd expect you to
> be fine.

Didn't think about the iPod Touch in the kitchen streaming Pandora.
--
America is at that awkward stage. It's too late
to work within the system, but too early to shoot
the *******s."-- Claire Wolfe

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:13:06 -0400, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>Didn't think about the iPod Touch in the kitchen streaming Pandora.

Pandora doesn't really stream. It sends the next tune just before the
currently playing tune ends, in a high speed burst. Typically, that's
a tune every 3 minutes, with a short 2-10 second burst just before the
tune ends. In between bursts, there no traffic. You can see it on
any network traffic monitor.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

In article <geba289e92giie7cj88ommqocghd1ovg8n@4ax.com>,
Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:13:06 -0400, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Didn't think about the iPod Touch in the kitchen streaming Pandora.
>
> Pandora doesn't really stream. It sends the next tune just before the
> currently playing tune ends, in a high speed burst. Typically, that's
> a tune every 3 minutes, with a short 2-10 second burst just before the
> tune ends. In between bursts, there no traffic. You can see it on
> any network traffic monitor.

Cool. Then this acts like a third surfer instead of a major constant
drain.
--
America is at that awkward stage. It's too late
to work within the system, but too early to shoot
the *******s."-- Claire Wolfe

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:05:03 -0400, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>In article <geba289e92giie7cj88ommqocghd1ovg8n@4ax.com>,
> Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:13:06 -0400, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Didn't think about the iPod Touch in the kitchen streaming Pandora.
>>
>> Pandora doesn't really stream. It sends the next tune just before the
>> currently playing tune ends, in a high speed burst. Typically, that's
>> a tune every 3 minutes, with a short 2-10 second burst just before the
>> tune ends. In between bursts, there no traffic. You can see it on
>> any network traffic monitor.

> Cool. Then this acts like a third surfer instead of a major constant
>drain.

Semi-cool. Pandora is rather picky about when it sends its burst of
data and how long it takes. If the download path is constipated with
other traffic, such as a download in progress, and Pandora finds that
it's taking too long to download the next tune, it will stop and
deliver a connection error message that has to be manually reset with
the mouse. That's rather irritating when I'm using Pandora for
background music while I'm downloading updates on customers machines
in the office.

It also tends to be a PITA with VoIP. Although I have QoS running to
give priority to voice traffic, Pandora still manages to hog enough
bandwidth for the few seconds it takes to download a tune to make the
VoIP audio sound like gargling ball bearings.

I think my next adventure in router configuration is going to revolve
around QoS and bandwidth management to keep Pandora and VoIP happy.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 09:37:08 -0400, Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com>
wrote:

>My wife and I run both our computers off the house Internet connection
>(not a real big deal, I know). She runs off the Wifi and I run Ethernet
>since the modem and router are in my office.
>If I start to run my computer off the wifi too, is there much of a
>chance that I will note a fall off in WiFi response.

Difficult to tell. Wireless can run at any association speed between
1Mbits/sec and 54Mbits/sec. Troughput is about half of that. Throw
in MIMO and/or performance enhancements and speeds of up to maybe
300Mbits/sec are theoretically possible. If one wireless connection
is running at 9Mbits/sec (the slowest 802.11g speed), while the other
is at 54Mbit/sec (the fastest 802.11g speed), the slow connection will
hog 6 times as much air time as the faster connection. There will be
some interaction, but because of the speed differences, the 9Mbit/sec
connection will *SEEM* to be 6 times slower. In general, the computah
that is closer to the wireless router will seem faster and more
responsive.

There's also an issue of bandwidth distribution. With a 1.5Mbit/sec
DSL line, the wi-fi is much faster than the DSL line making the DSL
speed the limiting factor. However, with a 6-12Mbit/sec cable modem
connection, the match is much closer, making marginal wi-fi
connections a bigger factor than network speed.

Wi-fi is also not the best in terms of reliability and consitency. If
the neighbor happens to be using the same RF channel, you'll
experience interference on one of both of your wi-fi connected
computahs. The problem is that it's difficult to determine if it's
something you're doing with your system, or interference from the
neighbors streaming video system. If you want reliability, stay with
the wired connections.

>We both use it
>mainly for web surfing, and e-mail. What information would be needed
>to help?

None. You're fine. What you're basically asking is for us to predict
your wi-fi performance. Even if you supplied us with a layout of the
building, and RF sniffer results for the neighborhood, it would be
difficult trying to estimate the performance of your machines.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

In article <6bea28h2ktptjd4ntvsbqa9n3pv1koc0uo@4ax.com>,
Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@cruzio.com> wrote:

> None. You're fine. What you're basically asking is for us to predict
> your wi-fi performance. Even if you supplied us with a layout of the
> building, and RF sniffer results for the neighborhood, it would be
> difficult trying to estimate the performance of your machines.

o basically this, for me at least with limited background, is a try and
see what happens time? (g).
--
America is at that awkward stage. It's too late
to work within the system, but too early to shoot
the *******s."-- Claire Wolfe