Have you switched over to using 'N' based wireless router(s)?

When I moved a computer to a remote part of the house lately I installed an 80211.n draft based nic card inside. It's been working well with a b/g based wireless router at the other end of the place, but of course the fastest it'll do is 54Mb, (in fact I've locked out the 'b' mode altogether).

Sooner or later I was planning on upgrading the main router to one supporting the 'n' standard; I was wondering if many had already done so and was the improvement evident? And what of these troubles I've been hearing about poor distance and less than advertised throughput?

berk

Reply to
TBerk
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Yes; the main advantage for me has been getting off the 2.4GHz band and on to the 5GHz band, which is much less crowded (phones, neighbors, etc.).

Distance and throughput are going to be heavily dependent on the gear at both ends and the environment you're trying to operate in.

Steve

Reply to
Steve Fenwick

On Sun, 10 May 2009 02:26:16 -0700, Steve Fenwick wrote in :

That's either single-band 5 GHz or dual-band -- there are also single-band 2.4 GHz draft 802.11n products that won't operate on 5 GHz. Also, while 5 GHz may well be less crowded than 2.4 GHz in a given location, it doesn't propagate as well as 2.4 GHz, which could offset the benefit of a less crowded band.

Correct. In particular, the much higher speeds of 802.11n are possible only over relatively short clear path distances with comparable high-performance hardware at both ends. Likewise the greater range.

802.11n hardware is NOT all the same, particularly draft products.
Reply to
John Navas

Simultaneous dual-band, in my case; the latest Time Capsule from Apple. My house is only 1200 square feet, with the AP located near the middle of the house, so great range is not a requirement.

Steve

Reply to
Steve Fenwick

I used one of the ethernet ports on my g router to connect to an Airport Express running 802.11n.

Put the MacBooks on the n network and iPhone and PS3 on the g network.

The 5 Ghz network is solid, much stronger signal strength and it never cuts out.

I used to routinely reboot the g router because the signal to the MacBooks cut out. Or I would turn off Airport on the MacBooks and turn it back on, which seemed to reinitialize the connection.

I don't know if it was interference from neighborhood Wifi networks. Or it might have been my router, which is a portable Linksys with minimal RAM and minimal firmware memory. I wanted to flash the DD-WRT firmware but the model I have isn't supported, not enough firmware memory to flash DD-WRT.

I don't transfer files between the computers on the n network so I don't know about throughput. But the reliability of the connection alone makes it worth the upgrade as well as Airtunes, which I use with the Remote.app.

Reply to
poldy

Thx for the replies, the main thing I'm foreseeing as a reason to upgrade might well be the 'empty' bandwidth in the area in that frequency range. Maybe.

(I've been looking at RF/Microwave detection equipment lately. but I digress.)

It's kind of a catch-22; buying cheap equipment to experiment with (N Router) and find out the experiment wasn't necessaries valid because the cheapness of the initial expenditure limited the outcome. Such is life.

berk

Reply to
TBerk

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