Wi-Fi Performance samples

 Wi-Fi Performance, broadly

Number 2 in a series on Wi-Fi performance. This time, Wi-Fi (and networking in general) is compared in difference places is compared. Sneak preview: Bluetooth PAN is the slowest :-)

I ran a simple speed test and gathered latency information (round-trip UDP times) in a variety of places and network. No surprise, Ethernet is the fastest and Bluetooth is the slowest. Airport Wi-Fi had generally high throughput (it's higher throughput than my house Wi-Fi network, although note that I have fiber with a low bandwidth cap) but with medium latency.

PAN? Bluetooth Personal Area Network? What's that?

Bluetooth PAN (Personal Area Network) is a technology that lets you share an internet connection from one laptop to another using Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi. I'm not quite sure why people would do this, but it's still supported in Windows. It's got a non-winning combination of low speed and high latency. 

To actually share a network connection using PAN:

1. On the "host" laptop, open the Mobile Hotspot settings, and share your Wi-Fi (or Ethernet) connection with Bluetooth. 

2. On the "using" laptop, you need to get to the PAN settings page. AFAICT, there's only one way to do this: 

• right-click on the Bluetooth icon and click "Join a Personal Area Network"
• in the resulting Vista-era "Devices and Printers", select the "host" computer whose network you want to join. You might need to first pair with the "host" computer.
• click connect using and select direct connection.