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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?

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  • Its like asking why the sata connection can go many times faster than data can be read off the platters, it still is good to get fastest communications from the one set of electronic junk to the other set of electronic junk :-) Because each of them incur thier own tiny delays in small or large buffers, any compressions used, and just hopping through transisters. Poor data has to go through how many different things in each situation?
    – Psycogeek
    Nov 14, 2011 at 1:08
  • IIRC, 802.11n has some range advantages over 802.11g. Regardless, you're right in assuming that you won't download any faster from the internet. If you need to transfer files between computers on your network, however, you can do the math (just look up the connection speeds for both specifications). Nov 14, 2011 at 1:56
  • I personally was ok with G for internet speeds, but i recently bought a NAS and instead of trying to hardwire my laptop, I simply got a Wireless N access point. With G i got speeds of about 1-2MBps transfer speeds, with N, i get about 16-20MBps. So i can transfer 500MB in a few minutes, where before it would probably take 10-15 minutes if not more. In fact my router is still the same wireless G router, it's a nice router, so i kept it and everything else separated internally to wireless N or 1GB/s over wire.
    – Matt
    Nov 14, 2011 at 7:53
  • As for my own question here superuser.com/questions/166333/… , in my personal experience on a 20Mbps connection, switching from 802.11g to 802.11n allowed me to max-out my connection. I advise you to try your 25Mbps connection on 802.11g and see if you get the same results I got.
    – wtaniguchi
    Nov 14, 2011 at 11:20

2 Answers 2

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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.

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  • There is no "answer above". Answers are ordered by number of votes and the sorting can also be changed by the user (order by activity and post date). You should refer to the other answers saying the user's name. Nov 14, 2011 at 7:09
  • Clearly...Sathya took care of that.
    – Garrett
    Nov 14, 2011 at 18:17
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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.

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    Ya, i'd note even the crappiest connection possible in a semi modern system - 10 mbps, is a fair bit faster than anything but perhaps high end cable internet packages or fiber. The big advantage to high speed lans is inside the network
    – Journeyman Geek
    Nov 14, 2011 at 0:37

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