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802.11g has a max speed of 54 Mbps, and even at half that, is still faster than my FiOS download speed of 25 Mbps. Therefore, my local hardware is not the bottleneck. So, for the purpose of internet usage, is there any point in getting 802.11n hardware?

RexE
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2 Answers2

13

In addition to ultrasawblade's answer, with wireless you will also never get the full rated speed, even if you are right next to the unit due to signal loss, interference, etc. Every percentage of signal loss incurs a bandwidth (throughput) penalty as well. So if you have a faster connection to start with, you have more residual throughput as the signal strength decreases.

Further, with .11n you can run in 5Ghz mode as you could back with .11a. The great thing about the 5Ghz range is there is much less frequency interference from other common household items like cordless phones, bluetooth, microwaves, car alarms, baby monitors, other nearby b/g/n wifi networks, etc.

Community
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Garrett
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11

There isn't if you are only concerned with communication from the Internet to your system via the wireless.

However, if you have other systems on your home network, then that is where speed up and above your Internet connection speed matters. For example, I have a media and file server, and I enjoy the benefits of wired Gigabit Ethernet, even though I'm not getting anywhere near 1Gbit/sec from my Internet service provider.

LawrenceC
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