[sdkaneda]

so i just picked up my first mac, a powerbook g4. i'm thrilled with it, love the feel of it and it continues to surprise me.

the only real problem i've been having is with file sharing between the powerbook and my old XP box. when transferring a large volume of files (or sometimes just one large file) from the pc to the mac, after anywhere from 100 to 500mb transferred, Airport acts like my wireless network has disappeared. any app that was trying to access the networked files (usually Finder) then locks up so badly I have to do a hard reset. after that, Airport still doesn't detect my wifi network until i reset my wireless router.

any ideas? i could really use some help.

It's OS X 10.3 and my other box has XP SP2. the wireless router i'm using is a Gnet BB0070 adsl modem/wireless ap/print server combo.

another thing: i find the file sharing to be ridiculously slow. it's an 802.11b network and files transfer at about 500k/sec... not much faster than my internet connection! the transfers also stall for about 5 seconds on every megabyte or two. doesn't matter if the pb is an inch away from the access point or at the other end of the house. it's really quite aggravating.

[larkost]

I am not going to touch the intermittent pausing... there have been a number of WiFi routers sited for that problem (typically cheap ones), and there are soo many environmental factors to look at...

But on the speed part, lets look at the numbers:

802.11b theoretically is 10Mb/sec (notice that is bits, not bytes).
so... 10Mb/sec * 8 bits/byte = 1.25 MB/sec

So your transfer rate of 500KB/sec is approximately 40% of that theoretical max (burst) speed.

Now the thing you need to know is that in networking your throughput_numbers are always significantly smaller than your theoretical max busts speed. For actual data transfer 40% is not bad at all, especially since we are using a protocol that reduces its speed to compensate for distance.

Now... last little bit, are you sure you have a 500KB/sec internet connection? Comcast advertises themselves as being the fastest out there (US market... Asia has better), and they are advertising a 3Mb/sec connection (theoretical max bust... and shared... and "not guaranteed"). This would only be 384KB/sec (max theoretical bust speed), and that is only to the head end.

Personally I have never beat 160KB/sec on my connection, and that was to a local Akami host.