How to check wifi networking standard of current connection

Question

Both my router and my wireless networking card support the standards 802.11a/b/g/n but as I'm only getting speeds around 30-40 Mbit/s I suspect that it's the g standard being used instead of n. Now, I'd like to verify this somehow, so my question is: Is there a way (like a network diagnistics tool or the like) to find out which standard is currently used in the communication between computer and router?

Answer 1

On Windows (tested on Win7, should be compatible with Vista back to Windows XP):

netsh wlan show interfaces

C:\Users\myUser> netsh wlan show interfaces
There is 1 interface on the system:
Name                   : Wireless Network Connection 2
Description            : DW1520 Wireless-N WLAN Half-Mini Card
State                  : connected
Network type           : Infrastructure
Radio type             : 802.11g         <-- the currently negotiated value
Authentication         : WPA-Personal
Cipher                 : CCMP
Connection mode        : Auto Connect
Channel                : 11
Receive rate (Mbps)    : 54
Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 54
Signal                 : 82%
Profile                : xxxx

Hosted network status  : Not started

---

On many Linux flavors (including Debian) use iwconfig.

Although it doesn't display a string such as "802.11n", it does display Bit Rate:54 Mb/s among other settings.