Network Speed Test

In pursuit of cutting the cable TV cord, I need to have ethernet available to all TVs in the house. Right now, there’s 802.11g WiFi and Coax. You can use FiOS’ coax as a LAN with a MOCA bridge, but you’ll need either a dedicated MOCA bridge (~$70) or a used ActionTec router. Another option is to run Ethernet cable through the house–something I’d rather avoid if I can. So the question is, how much bandwidth do I need? According to the Wikipedia artlcle on HD video 1080p needs between 3.5 and 8.25 Mbits/sec, depending on the source.

To test my existing connections, I first did a speed test (Broadband Blue Angles (4MB) from the closest provider) of my FiOS connection on my desktop connected directly to the FiOS router. The speed varies between 6 and 7.5 Mbits/sec. This is enough for most streaming. But what about if I’m connected via WiFi? The same test from my laptop connected to the FiOS router over WiFi yeilds about the same result. So WiFi isn’t limiting my Internet speed.

Lastly, I want to know how much bandwidth I have internally to use a Myth TV box that’s not streaming from the Internet. To do this, I set up a random 100MB file:
$ dd if=/dev/urandom of=100MB.bin bs=1M count=100
to transfer around. Across two boxes over a wired FiOS connection I got only 4-5.5MB/sec. Between one wired and one WiFi box I got 2-2.5 MB/sec. This would seem to indicate the ActionTec router is limiting my intranet speed.