Are you talking about the ethernet ports? 1 looks like a large telephone jack and the other is sort of rectangular with a double row of curved contacts. The telephone jack shaped one is a 10baseT ethernet port that uses the cat5 RJ45 cable to tie to a network while the other is called an AAUI port that is connected to a network via an adapter that can tie to either an RJ45 or appletalk cable depending on the connector. Only 1 port is usable at a time and the telephone jack shaped RJ45 is faster.
There is only one ethernet chipset on the motherboard. The two sockets both wire into it, but since it isn't a hub, only one can be used at a time.
They are BOTH 10baseT and are BOTH the SAME speed. ...Apple's 10base ethernet implementation is pretty good, btw. Most PCs can barely do 4 to 6 Mbps thru their 10base NICs. You can easily sustain 8 Mbps or faster on any of the Macs (IIci or newer).
AUUI was Apple's way of (unintentionally) screwing Mac users, by making them use a proprietary connector instead of one of the industry standards. The few Macs that had only AUUI sockets were given bad reviews and left on shelves by the comerical world. Apple quickly added the RJ45 connector...
I'm old fashioned (and already have a goodly investment in Cat5 cable all through my network) so haven't bothered with wireless.
Not old fashioned, IMO. SMART.
WEP & war driving problems notwithstanding...
802.11b is a one room / one wall technology. A waste of $.
802.11a is a bit better, but the speed dropoff still sucks. And it still suffers from interference issues.
Manufacturers are slowly addressing the dropoff issues by adding a bit more power and better antennas to the transmitters.
In May, the FCC proposed allocating more bandwidth to the unlicensed 5 GHz spectrum. This means the 802.11 specs may be modified to support more channels - increasing throughput and decreasing interference. The big winner will be 802.11g (Airport Extreme). By stretching it from 3 to 24 channels, the aggregate throughput will be 1 Gbps (54 Mbps per channel).
And for you bigger/better/faster/more fans, there's 802.16a. Originally intended for mid-haul, it's going to become so inexpensive that us home users will be able to afford it directly. 802.16a is 70 Mbps, with a 31 mile range.
[*] mid-haul = the linkage that comes before the "last mile". ISP <-> 802.16a WAP <-> numerous 802.11 WAPs in homes.
FWIW, - Dan.
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