wifi ignorance

May 26, 2009 12:29 PM

WiFi router ignorance

I am in the UK. I have a Netgear DG834G router (a few years old.) I have an 8 meg dsl connection (router stats tell me 8128kps down and 448 kps up.)

Is there any point upgrading to a newer router?

For instance, the Netgear RangeMax Next is described as 15 x faster than Wireless g and with 4 x the range. I know my dsl connection will not be 15 times better, but will I notice any speed difference between my laptop and the router do you think folks?

posted by A189Nut to computers & internet (6 comments total)

An 802.11g router is (theoretically) 54Mbit. It's not actually that fast in practice, but it's still going to be a lot more than 8.

To look at it another way, imagine you're flying cargo into an airport, where you load it onto a train to ship it to cities. If you can only fly in 8 tons per day, and your train already can handle at least a couple dozen tons, a bigger train is not going to do you any good.
posted by Tomorrowful at 12:39 PM on May 26

If your laptop's wireless card is g, then that's what it will talk at and you'll see no benefit. If it supports n, then you may see improvement, but I don't think the n standard is settled yet, so they may not talk correctly. Check the compatibility list if they have one,
posted by IanMorr at 12:42 PM on May 26

An 802.11g router is (theoretically) 54Mbit. It's not actually that fast in practice, but it's still going to be a lot more than 8.

Also, the top-end bandwidth number is only useful for bulk downloads/uploads from sources that are at least as fast as you are. So assuming you're not downloading at full speed all the time (which at that rate would be terabytes of data every month) you wouldn't see much of a difference in your Internet experience even if your router was limiting your connection to half of the possible max speed.

The main reason why someone would need super-fast wireless speeds is to do bulk transfers over a local network. If you back up your 500 GB hard drive to a file server regularly over the network, for example, the time it takes to do a full backup will be directly related to how fast the wireless conection can go.
posted by burnmp3s at 1:00 PM on May 26

If you upgrade from G to N, you wouldn't notice a tremendous speed increase between your computer and the internet. You would see faster speeds in LAN traffic and probably an improvement in range.

Do this: plug your laptop directly into the router and see what kind of speed/performance you get. If it's significantly better, then upgrading the wireless link between the two to 802.11n might be worth while. If not, then don't bother for just internet usage.

I wouldn't bother to upgrade unless you want more range, higher speed on your wireless LAN or see a noticeable difference between your wired/wireless connections.
posted by JuiceBoxHero at 1:51 PM on May 26

The range boost for N is most compelling. Beyond that there is the obvious LAN speedup but if all you have is the router and the one computer then there isn't much point to upgrading.
posted by chairface at 1:57 PM on May 26

My informal 54g testing in various environment floats around 8-12 mbps using a variety of crappy equipment in noisy environments. Considering your DSL maxes out at 8, I think you'll be fine.

The real reason to move to N has nothing to do with the internet and everything to do with large file copies or HD video streaming over your LAN from one computer to another.
posted by damn dirty ape at 6:30 PM on May 26