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I know that dialup connections usually have a bandwidth of 56Kbps and a connection through LAN is like 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps or 1GBit/sec.

How much is it for WIFI connections?

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I depends on what kind of a wireless router/access point + wireless card you have on your laptop/phone.

There are different Wi-Fi technologies offering different signaling rates:

  • 802.11n (3 spacial streams) - up to 450 mbps
  • 802.11n (2 spacial streams) - up to 300 mbps
  • 802.11n (1 spacial stream) - up to 150 mbps
  • 802.11a/802.11g - up to 54 mbps
  • 802.11b - up to 11 mbps

Technologies in the same band (b/g/n in 2.4GHz, and a/n in 5GHz) can interconnect as all implementations have always offered backward compatibility.

You should also know that 802.11 has a lot of overhead, so the actual TCP throughput you get under ideal conditions ends up being about 50-60% of the signaling rate.

You can read about the protocol overhead here

http://wirelesslanprofessionals.com/why-is-the-wireless-network-slow-overhead-issues/

Your speed will also be limited by the slower link partner (access point or client station).

For example, if you connect to an 802.11n access point with an 802.11b STA, then the max speed you will get is 11 mbps.

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  • Thanks for the information. I was looking for something like that. That is a table listed with all Class of Wifi. Just one thing, these are speeds of the Connection on the PC right. Assume my Wireless Router has infinite capacity, then I would be able to connect to and get a speed of 11Mbps with 802.11b connection? May 22, 2011 at 6:23
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    your wireless router cannot have an infinite capacity, the same technology is used in both the Station (your laptop) as well as the Master (your wireless router). Gonna update my answer with more details May 22, 2011 at 6:33
  • @spiff thanks for updating, do you not think that the fact that is half duplex should be mentioned? May 22, 2011 at 6:58
  • @Gunner, if you think this answers, your question, do mark it as the accepted answer May 22, 2011 at 7:17
  • @freethinker The fact that you only get throughput of only half the signaling speed is worth mentioning, but the reason is not half-duplex, the reason is overhead.
    – Spiff
    May 22, 2011 at 9:23

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