What's the maximum file transfer speed over WiFi 802.11g?

Solution 1:

Unless the computers are connected by an ad-hoc wireless network, it is the distance between the computer and the access point that is important.

54 Mbps is a theoretical throughput, which is roughly equivalent to 6,75MB/s. So you can expect up to 6,75MB/s as network bandwidth.

But when you are transferring files, the bandwidth is not fully used for transfer because of:

• Wireless control frames
• Network overhead (IP headers)
• File Transfer Protocol overhead
• Packet loss
• Interference and retransmission

At the end, the best you can expect is around 4MB/s in real transfer rate with a light protocol (like HTTP).

Solution 2:

Mb/s means megabits per second. To convert to megabytes, you simply divide by 8, since there are 8 bits in a byte.

So 54Mb/s = 54Mb/s * 1Mb/8MB = 6.75MB/s

So you can theoretically cap out at just under 7 megabytes per second on 802.11g. :)