Windows 7 Paralell WLAN/Wifi file transfer slower than sequential?

[pstein]

Assume I have two computers A and B which are connected (through WLAN/Wifi router) in an inhouse net.

Now I have to transfer huge file archives (> 10 GB) from A to B and other huge file archives from B to A.

I could either do this file transfers
1) in parallel (=start copying files from A to B and from B to A at the same time)
or
2) wait until file copying from A to B is finished and then start B to A.

What is faster?

I could imagine that protocol overhead and interrupts in case 1 could slow down throughput.
On the other hand I could use in case 1 unused upload capacity into the opposite direction during download.

Any recommendations for this scenario?

Peter

 

[Jimbo22]

The speed transfer is directly related to you hardware and then by the limitations of your LAN/Wifi speeds (the hardware on your modem/router and your wifi adapter)....all play a major roll in what your asking. All this varies from system to system due to hardware/software configurations.

For me, for large file transfers, I prefer to use a USB 3.0 thumb drive to move data from PC to PC. It's simple and fast.

 

[Neemobeer]

802.11 (wireless) is collision detection based. This means that each device has to listen and determine no one else is talking before transmitting. So if you have B sending data to A and A sending to B you can expect more collisions which result in slower transfer speeds. If you can go wired on one or both you would get much faster speeds and you can transfer in parallel since wired switched connections are full duplex (they can transmit and receive) at the same time and there is no collision domain on a wired switched network.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Good responses here fellas! Couple of things worth mentioning; is that if the OP has Gigabit Ethernet between both computers A and B as well as the router (router needs to be Gigabit Ethernet as well), practical maximum is around 125MB/sec. When both computers are transmitting through the collision based Ethernet network as neemo astutely mentions; that's gonna slow down to half of that, 62.5MB/sec or so. Taking a 10GB file and doing the math, it would take somewhere around 44 hrs. if you had no interruptions from your AC power or any hiccups from the router.

Now going direct connection versus Ethernet; let's take a look at USB 3.0 as bassfisher suggests. USB 3.0 maxes out at a speed 5.0GB/sec, accordingly USB 2.0 at a more modest 480MB/sec. or 0.480GB/sec. roughly 10 times slower than USB 3.0. Math says USB 3.0 can finish a backup copy to a solid state SSD or flash drive in 2.0 sec!! Of course that's theoretical, but a heak of a lot faster than 44 hrs.! Math says USB 2.0 would be 20.83 sec. Still not too shabby. The key here would be to combine a solid state drive (SSD or flash drive) along with a speedy USB 3.0 port; result would be in seconds versus days.

Of course it's up to the OP which way to go, but bass's recommendation looks pretty good to me. Network Ethernet ratings are notoriously overrated. Here's a good article: Speed Test: The Myth of Gigabit Ethernet

Edit: sorry got interrupted by Dinner!

<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>