Does the speed of a wireless router change with the number of users using the wireless signal?

Question

I am not talking about the internet speed, just the speed of the home network

Answer 1

yes the more people on a wireless connection the slower you are but wired connections don't lose speed.

Answer 2

The router is capable of it's top theoretical speed at any given moment.

The speed will not necessarily change with the number of users attached to the router, but it WILL change with the number of users SIMULTANEOUSLY USING the wireless signal at any given moment, because you'll have to divide the top speed of the router by the number of users.

This is not usually an issue because your top high-speed connection is usually 10Mbps or less to the Internet, while the typical router is either 11Mbps or 54Mbps or more.

Answer 3

Apparent speed, yes. Only one client will talk to the router wirelessly at any time, so even though you'll still be connected at 54Mbps or 11Mbps or whatever, it will take longer to get a chance to talk to the router. Kind of like talking to the popular kid at a party. =)

With one or two lightly-used connections it is not a big deal, but if you have several computers doing big downloads you will see a definite performance hit.

Answer 4

Depends on the router. Linksys routers can only handle one wireless connection at a time so they are forced to keep switching beteen machines while Netgear routers can handle multiple wireless connection simultaneously.

Answer 5

It doesn't seem to affect it too much at my house, but theoretically it should. I suppose it's because most of the time, your computer is not pumping bits at maximum speed. Each computer can take a time-slice on the main connection and they all get along at about whatever *their* maximum speeds are.

Answer 6

TANSTAAFL