All I need WiFi for is to share a 10 Mbit/s ADSL Internet connection.
The apartment is not very convenient for WiFi signal distribution (there are numerous WiFi networks in the area, many wifi clients, many walls and the area is quite wide (but the signal is still tolerable so don't suggest adding more access points)) and I tend to limit (in the router settings) the WiFi speed with 11 Mbit/s standard rate to add stability by getting rid of connection rate retrains.
Also I have a choice of b
, g
, n
, bg
and bgn
modes. What is better to choose here in case I neither need speeds higher than those supported by all of them nor extended compatibility (well, extra compatibility won't harm if removing it adds no profit)? I usually disable n
or even g
but I am not sure I am right – perhaps they have got some stability improvements too (rather than of speed alone), I don't know their internals so I ask:
What are other pros and cons of 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11n WiFi standards on the same standard rates when using same hardware (supporting all of them)?
Prologue: About 7 years ago, when there were no n
, but only a
, b
and g
, I was very impressed with an experience I've got – while modern USB-attached g
WiFi NICs could hardly sense any signal (they were able to establish a very bad connection from time to time but only to loose it in a matter of minutes or even seconds) in a distant room separated by thick metalized walls, an old PCMCIA-attached b
(or a
, I can't remember) card was able to maintain quite stable connection there and even in a more distant room.
Best Answer
Limiting the data rate won't improve the range.
IEEE 802.11n
would not only have a better data rate rate thanIEEE 802.11g
, it will also have a better range. So even if you only need 10MBps, you may need the range.From Wikipedia :
There are theoretically no drawbacks of using 802.11n at 2.4 GHz over 802.11g. But you can't compare the performance of two differents Wifi adapters using two differents protocols. In the case of your old experience, maybe your PCMCIA card was simply more powerful than your USB NIC despite the protocol difference, or maybe your access point was deficient (connecting a
b
client on ab/g
WAP may also impactsg
clients).So, if you have 802.11n clients, then you definitely wants to enable
802.11n
support on your access point, and if you don't have anyb/g
clients, then you may even disable the backwardb/g
support for better performance.Also note that if your AP supports IEEE_802.11n at 5GHz, it may (or may not) give you better performance/coverage depending on the perturbation you may have on your area. 5GHz is a much less crowded frequency spectrum than 2.4GHz (Wifi, Bluetooth, Phones, wireless remote, etc.); But since it's a much higher frequency it has a much lower range which is counterbalanced by using more powerful transmitters, but it won't behave with obstacles the same way 2.4GHz do, it depends on the kind of obstacles.