11g vs 11b - difference in browsing/downloading speed on Internet?

TerryP hath wroth:

Neither. It's more complicated than that. The speed of the hotspot is limited by their backhaul to the ISP. For DSL, that's

1.5-6.0Mbits/sec. For cable modem, it can go up to 18Mbits/sec in bursts and might average 6Mbits/sec. If connected to a corporate backbone through a fiber connection, it could be astronomical. At that point, the limit might be the performance of the wireless access point (which are fairly dismal), and certainly the speed of the wireless. Without a clue as to what's behind your hot spotz router, I can't even begin to speculate as to the ultimate performance.

See:

for maximum speeds.

Typically, an 11mbit/sec 802.11b association will max out at about

5.0Mbits/sec. An 802.11g associations at 54Mbits/sec will do up to perhaps 25Mbits/sec. Therefore, assuming the router can handle the traffic, if the backhaul is 5Mbits/sec or less, the two cards will be equal. If the backhaul is more than 5Mbits/sec, the 802.11g card will be faster.

So much for theory. Now, do some benchmarking. Find a suitable internet speed test and see what it yields. Try to get a test site that is as close to your ISP as possible or you will get erronious results.

(see site list near bottom of page)

Jeff explains the whole picture, but since you said it was a WiFi hotspot, it most likely has a 1.5 Mbps DSL connection (although it might be a 1.5 Mbps T1 line) - subtracting the WiFi overheard, you will most likely see half that when you run a speed test on the internet, i.e.

Even if it was a 5 or 6 Mbps DSL connection, you'll see a speed test result of about 2.5 or 6 Mbps. At any rate, your b or g card will be faster than any hotspot location.

So in that sense, you are correct and he is incorrect if he's looking at his system tray speed.

DTC hath wroth:

Most of the local hot spots are running 3Mbit/sec DSL because of the high peak usage. It's only $10/month more to go from 1.5Mbits/sec to

3.0Mbit/sec.

I have a 1500/384 Kbit/sec DSL line at home. Running the speed test from my ISP, I get 1300/323 Kbits/sec TCP speed. That's over an

802.11g wireless connection over a distance of ummmm.... about 3 ft. If you're getting half the raw DSL rate, something is broken.

Incidentally, it might be your router. See the table of WAN->LAN performance results at:

Some of the routers near the bottom are real losers on thruput. The list didn't include and ancient Netgear RT311 which I would guess couldn't even do 1Mbit/sec.

Also not true. Note the various speed results for the local DSL provider (sbcglobal.net) at:

You can see the peaks at the 3 service levels of 1500, 3000, and 6000 Kbits/sec. These seem to get 1200, 2400, and 4800 Kbits/sec respectively. While not quite equal to the raw (advertised) speed, it's certainly not half.

Don't say "any". I know of one corporate hotspot that gets most of an OC3 (155Mbits/sec) after business hours. No, I'm not telling where. I've gotten 25Mbits/sec download speed at times.

True, if you have a wired connection to the DSL. But I was taking in account worst case to a wireless end point.

My 5Mbps DSL lines come in just above the advertised rate at 5.1 Mbps or so.

B is fine speed-wise for *typical* internet. I would never bother to get out the screwdriver for that reason, not to mention buy a new card.

Bigger reason to go G is that few of the B (older) devices can do WPA security. The Gs (newer) can. Also, they will connect on a network that is set to G-only and the B card will be out of luck.

If those are not issues, then fine. Personally, I have a Belkin G pcmcia and an Orinoco Gold "B". My Orinoco WILL do WPA, so, being a generally better device, I use it and keep the Belkin as a spare. In my case, I choose the B card.

As far as signal strength goes, as I learned from Jeff, if you locked the G card to a lower speed (12) , you will get similar signal strength to the B card.

Steve