54Mbps or 300Mbps?

Hi

I am looking to buy a wireless router for my laptop to share the connection with the broadband on my PC, but am wondering which one is better for me? 54Mbps or 300Mbps? Am quite clueless when it comes to these technical details.

I will use the internet for browsing but mainly for playing online poker. Can anybody advise please?

 

The 300Mbps will obviously be faster, but only if you laptop's wireless card can take advantage of the increased speed. Do you know the type of wireless card you have (i.e. 802.11 g or 802.11 n ) or the model?

If there is a not a substantial difference in price I'd go with the 300Mbps router to future proof your network.

 

Frankly, just get a reliable wireless-g (54Mbps) router; my suggestion would be the WRT54GL. For your usage, you won't notice the speed difference between it and a 300Mbps router (wireless-n). With some 300Mbps routers you *might* notice a range boost, but unless you live in a huge house or have walls made of lead, that possible extra range will almost certainly be useless.

 

Thanks, well, I don't have a wireless card on my laptop but the product I am looking to buy offers a USB dongle. I also live in a small flat.

Will the one with 54Mbps be good enough for playing online poker?

 

Absolutely. 54Mbps is almost certainly much faster than your internet connection (the limiting factor here) and no online poker game that I've ever seen would stress anything but the slowest dial-up internet connections.

 

Great! Thank you, I'll go with that one.

 

Won't notice the difference? "Might" notice a range boost? No offense dude, but what drugs are you taking so I can avoid them? If you've had problems with N devices, you're either just not setting them up right or you might have interference problems. But G routers are just turtles compared to an N router/network that's setup and configured correctly.

There is a huge speed, signal and range difference between 802.11G and 802.11N devices - the only way you won't see any appreciable difference is if the router is a N device and the adapter is a G, or vice versa. The connection speed is determined by the speed of the slowest hardware device. Also, depending on the application or game, you might need different port settings to be setup. But N devices typically will see a minimum average of about 140mbps - those faster speeds are usually for Dual-Band networks.

I've recommended and installed N networks and devices for clients since they came out, and I have a Dual-Band N network myself. In every network I've setup, clients have seen an immediate increase in speed and signal quality. And the increased flexibility of Dual-Band that essentially gives you 2 networks in one is great for those systems that have dual purpose data requirements, such as media streaming and regular low-priority data flow (kids downloading MP3's, etc.).

It makes no difference what you're doing either - you'll see the speed increase just in regular browsing on the 'net or in online gaming. And range? Makes no difference, though further away is better as it gives you better signal at range.

Even if you get a system with only internal Wireless G capability, you can always get an N adapter - USB, card slot, or a media adapter for even better connection results since they use the system ethernet port as well as the radio connection. The key to getting the best performance out of an N network is to have both router and adapter matched - that is, both the same brand and standard.

If you want to stay in the Stone Age, go with Wireless G (54mbps max speed) or move into the real world with an N device (200mbps+). It is most certainly not "useless".

 

The OP mentioned no need for a high-speed intranet. It is unlikely that he even possesses the technical acuity to know what that means (no offense, OP). And, seriously, the ISP is the bottleneck here, as a previous poster mentioned. Very few people have internet connections that exceed 54 Mbps; otherwise, it's like insisting on running Crysis on a 2x Quad processor system with an Intel IGP.

 

Yes, and a Ferrari is faster than a Hyundai. If all you are doing is going to the store to pick up milk, though, you'll never notice.

The OP lives in a small apartment with a non-spectacular internet connection. He will therefore not notice any range increase or speed boost going from G to N, only a lighter wallet. N has its place (I use it myself) but is definetly not needed, or even beneficial, to everyone.

 

Unless you're going to be moving a lot of very, very large files around within your own subnetwork wirelessly (e.g., sending all 10,000 of Grandma's recipes for fruitcake from the wireless laptop in the kitchen to the wireless laptop in the .... well, you pick the location ), you're really not going to notice much benefit from 300Mbps over the 54Mbps of a wireless-g setup.

 

and unless range is not important to you then yes the G setup is cheaper. But N will trump G in any category except for pricing. After all, it was designed to overcome the downfall of G.

 

If you win lot of money why not 300Mbps

 

When you mention router and adapter I'm familiar with a router, when you use the term adapter are you referring to the type of internal wireless card a laptop has? For example if I purchased a new laptop which came configured with a wireless N card I would need to also purchase a wireless N router to make it work, correct or not so? I read previously if purchasing a Linksys N router to stay away from the model WRT610 and go with the model 600N instead.

 

G or N will make no difference for net browsing or playing online poker. In fact a good G router will probably be better than a crappy N router due to signal reliability. N is only good for file transfers. Wont make much difference streaming either. G is fast enough for streams.

 

The biggest advantage of 11n is if you get a dual band freq one you can move up to the 5ghz and get away from the crowded 2.4ghz bandwidth. For this you need a dual band dual radio for best performance.

Adapter refers to the NB or pc wireless card. This can be of several configurations depending on what type slot it needs to plug in to.

As far as routers use the router chart at smallnetbuilders.com , There are not very many dual radio models to choose from. and even less slot cards. Your adapter will be a single radio, and that all you will need. Most go back to the mfg to see what will fit there nb and more important drivers.

 

The adapter is the part that goes in the PC.

The equipment I'm familiar with is cross compatible. In other words, an N laptop still works on a G network (router) and a G laptop still works in an N environment.

I seem to recall some issues like maybe the entire network slows down to the speed of the slowest technology. If that's true, then putting a G notebook on an N network may slow down other N equipment to G speeds. But for a single computer that's irrelevant and I may be totally wrong about that anyway.

I would choose a notebook with an N card (and in fact, I just did) even if using with a G router. You might eventually upgrade the router. As others pointed out, this will not make a difference with browsing the Internet, but I have network file storage and this will allow me to edit pictures over the network.

HTH,
hank

edit: blue68f100 already provided better answers, but mistyped smallnetbuilders.com s/b smallnetbuilder.com (only one smallnetbuilder I guess. )

 

Very true; fortunately, for the average user, range isn't important.