Help me out please.

[Ellen_a]

Is wired networking significantly faster than normal networking?

[tdbs]

Hey Ellen, welcome to the forums.

Not quite sure what you mean by 'normal networking', but when comparing wired vs wireless, the wired option does have a speed advantage.

WiFi - usually 54Mbps nominal max transfer rate

Wired - usually 100Mbps (1000 for gigabit)

[EvilRick]

If you're just surfing the internet, you're not going to see a difference between a wired (normal) network as opposed to a wireless network.

The only time you'd see a significant difference is if you were copying files from one PC to the another across your network. Even then, it's not anything to get uptight about.

[crazyjeremy]

Ellen_a...

Just to reiterate... There are different speeds of wireless and wired networks.

All of the following speeds are in mbit format. It may not be necessary for you to learn exactly how fast 1 mbit/second is, but I will give the speeds for comparison.

Normal Home Wireless Speeds
802.11b is 11mbit/second
802.11g is 54mbit/second but some manufacturers speed boost it to 108
802.11n (It's faster than the others, but it's not ready yet. Plus it's expensive. Wait a year or two before buying n devices)

Wired Networking (Ethernet) Speeds:
10 mbit/second (old network cards)
100 mbit/second (the standard speed for home, some businesses)
1000 mbit/second (quite fast, more expensive and usually only in businesses)

I bring this out because if you are trying to buy a network for your home, your best bang for your buck is getting an 802.11g router with four 10/100 ethernet ports (the ports can change between 10mbit and 100mbit). This way, you have a way to use both wired and wireless networking in your home.

As EvilRick said, usually if you are just surfing the net, you won't see much of a difference between wireless and wired. But if you have a VERY fast internet connection, and you are downloading large files, you can run into the wireless being your bottleneck.

So if you're getting a wireless card, make sure it's 802.11g.

Hope this helps.
crazyjeremy