Question : Does a wireless gateway ie 3com WL-525 split the 54g bandwidth among all laptops connected to it.

Windows XP Client on 2003 Server Network using a wireless connection.

Laptops are within 50 meters of the access points and the signal level is very good and registering in windows as 54 most of the time.

Laptops have onboard intel 54g /centrino based and are fujitus seimens

When i have more than 3 laptops connected to the wireless point, the access seems to slow down, with 5 on its almost a crawl to open to open a 20mb photo .psd, that are used by students for photo editing.

Sometimes the connection will drop and windows will re-establish it, is this normal operation for wireless connecions? the connetions seem to drop more frequently with 5 pcs on compared to just 3, and take longer to re-establish.

Sometimes the wireless connection is not established at startup and misses group policy updates.

Sometimes the Doman controller cannot be found, however cached credentials allow the user to log on.

Can i make sure that the wireless connection is esablished at prelogon?

I need good network performance all the time, do i need 6 wireless access points to provide a dedicated 54mb to each laptop?

Thankyou very much for your ideas/solutions

Answer : Does a wireless gateway ie 3com WL-525 split the 54g bandwidth among all laptops connected to it.

speed is always an issue with wireless once you start getting clients connected to it but it shouldnt be to this extremity.

try updating to latest firmware on your wireless point.

Also, using wireless in a domain environment can be tricky. there is a wait for network policy which we can try applying but it would be good to try and sort your speed out first