Question: Wireless bridge vs. direct WiFi

Community Archives WD TV Live Networking
1

Presented in cliffs for quick reading:

  • Have DIR-655 wireless router (wireless G/N) in office
  • Living room has WD Live TV  (wireless N) configured to stream files from shared folder on office PC
  • Works great most of the time, but stutters on some files like ISOs and HD sources (getting approx 70-80% signal according to router)
  • Add DAP-1522 bridge (wireless N) to chain (also 70-80% signal) and no stutter at all (now WD Live has “wired” connection)

Dumb Question:
Why should the WD Live stutter when connected wirelessly to the router direct but play flawlessly when “wired” to a wireless bridge? Wouldn’t the data throughput be the same for transmission to each device? If anything, I would have expected more stutter as there is now an extra hop.

/forgive ignorance

2

Only guess I have is that the bridge has a better connection than a dongle, possibly due to position, orientation or antenna gain.

3

Thanks for the reply.

Actually, they sit side by side on my HT rack and the WD Live has built-in wifi, no dongle. The only thing I can think of is that the DIR-655 router and DAP-1522 bridge “talk” better to each other. They are both Dlink products so maybe the protocol is a bit smoother.