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 a b/g WAP may also impacts g clients). But you can't compare the performance of two differents Wifi adapters using two differents protocols. There are theoretically no drawbacks of using 802.11n at 2.4 GHz over 802.11g. So even if you only need 10MBps, you may need the range.įrom Wikipedia : Protocol Frequency Data Rate Indoor range

IEEE 802.11n would not only have a better data rate rate than IEEE 802.11g, it will also have a better range. Limiting the data rate won't improve the range. 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. 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)?

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: 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.Īlso I have a choice of b, g, n, bg and bgn modes.

All I need WiFi for is to share a 10 Mbit/s ADSL Internet connection.

802.11b/g/n 5ghz