Wireless, G vs N

[Tampon]

Is it really a whole lot better ?

I have to send a signal 35 ft, through one solid brick wall at least, would shelling out the extra for a N router make a difference at the other end ?

Are cheap N routers better than a expensive G router ?

Cheers

[DonnyMac]

N will make a big difference.

[Tampon]

Cheers, what about the cheap N Vs expensive G thing

[bogie]

yes if you have N clients

its not "more powerful" - wireless is limited by law in EU to 20dBm EIRP output, so its technically not possible to sell a "more powerful" product

but it has lots of tweaks to maintain output, reduce the affects of interference and such like

so you get a LOT more throughput at a given range

so if you have a 50% signal 2 rooms away now on 802.11g, it maybe has dropped to 24Mbps synch rate (12Mbps throughput)

with the same on 802.11n, 2 rooms away it may drop to 50% 150Mbps, so 75Mbps throughput

that makes it "over 5 times faster" for the marketing people out there

[Tampon]

Ok that will eb the next thing, how do I find out if my new dell laptop has N capabilities ?

[Road2Ruin]

bogie said:

yes if you have N clients

its not "more powerful" - wireless is limited by law in EU to 20dBm EIRP output, so its technically not possible to sell a "more powerful" product

but it has lots of tweaks to maintain output, reduce the affects of interference and such like

so you get a LOT more throughput at a given range

so if you have a 50% signal 2 rooms away now on 802.11g, it maybe has dropped to 24Mbps synch rate (12Mbps throughput)

with the same on 802.11n, 2 rooms away it may drop to 50% 150Mbps, so 75Mbps throughput

that makes it "over 5 times faster" for the marketing people out there

Whilst I agree with your figures I would love to see the N do 75Mbps. I reckon in a real word senario we are probably looking at 50Mbps max.

[Mr E]

bogie said:

but it has lots of tweaks to maintain output, reduce the affects of interference and such like

so you get a LOT more throughput at a given range

MIMO can be very effective. Also be aware that N can operate in the 5Ghz band, not the 2.4Ghz that everything else uses.

5Ghz will be experience more attenuation from the wall, but will more likely be on a less cluttered frequency.

For maximum coverage, I'd use N on 2.4Gig, but be away it will swamp the entire 802.11g band, not just bits of it. What else do you have running in that band in that location?


I'm guessing that unless it's a very new expensive Dell, it won't have 802.11n on the board.

I'm about to acquire a 802.11n router that will be run in G mode for pretty much the same reason.

[bogie]

I can do 70Mbps N in the same room here, 50Mbps next door through one wall ......

depends what you are measuring of course - synch rate or application layer throughput ....

Edited by bogie on Tuesday 20th October 14:25

[Road2Ruin]

bogie said:

I can do 90Mbps N in the same room here, 75Mbps next door through one wall ......

Is that what the wireless reports or what you actually get? There will be a big difference. My G network says I am getting 40Mbps but on testing it I am getting 8Mbps.

[bogie]

Road2Ruin said:

bogie said:

I can do 90Mbps N in the same room here, 75Mbps next door through one wall ......

Is that what the wireless reports or what you actually get? There will be a big difference. My G network says I am getting 40Mbps but on testing it I am getting 8Mbps.

I just edited my response from what I thought to what Im really getting LOL ...im testing out a WNDR3700 Netgear box at home

[bogie]

you do understand that wireless is only about 50% effcient as a protocol?

so 54Mbps G will give 25Mbps max in ideal conditions......

what is reported by the adapter utility is usually the synchronisation bit rate at the physical layer (in this case between radios)

what you see in Windows, is at the application layer

as data travels up and down a protocol stack more data is added on/stripped off

so on ethernet, to transport 1500bytes of data is really say 1526 bytes

on wireless its way more ineffiecient (encryption, retransmissions etc) so you need to send nearly 2x as much data to transmit that 1500 bytes

this is known as how efficient a protocol is - or what the "protocol overhead is"

ethernet - 95%
wireless - 50% ish
powerline - 40-45% ish

etc

so if your connection says you synch at 40Mbps, that a real 20Mbps or about 3 MB/s on a copy n paste in Windows .....

[Colin_147]

Also, dont expect a 54MB file to come down in 1 second on a 54Mbps connection, as there is 8 bits to every byte

Lots of people dont get/forget that

[Mr E]

Colin_147 said:

Also, dont expect a 54MB file to come down in 1 second on a 54Mbps connection, as there is 8 bits to every byte

Lots of people dont get/forget that

The capital/lower case 'b' is important children....

[Tampon]

Jesus what are you people talking about ? Not clue here.

If I have a G laptop and a N router will I get any benefit over a G router ?

Or should I stick with a G router?

[Dracoro]

Road2Ruin said:

bogie said:

I can do 90Mbps N in the same room here, 75Mbps next door through one wall ......

Is that what the wireless reports or what you actually get? There will be a big difference. My G network says I am getting 40Mbps but on testing it I am getting 8Mbps.

How are you testing it?

[Road2Ruin]

bogie said:

you do understand that wireless is only about 50% effcient as a protocol?

so 54Mbps G will give 25Mbps max in ideal conditions......

what is reported by the adapter utility is usually the synchronisation bit rate at the physical layer (in this case between radios)

what you see in Windows, is at the application layer

as data travels up and down a protocol stack more data is added on/stripped off

so on ethernet, to transport 1500bytes of data is really say 1526 bytes

on wireless its way more ineffiecient (encryption, retransmissions etc) so you need to send nearly 2x as much data to transmit that 1500 bytes

this is known as how efficient a protocol is - or what the "protocol overhead is"

ethernet - 95%
wireless - 50% ish
powerline - 40-45% ish

etc

so if your connection says you synch at 40Mbps, that a real 20Mbps or about 3 MB/s on a copy n paste in Windows .....

A very good example. Interestingly enough tomshardware.co.uk did a test of gigabit ethernet setups and found the limiting factors was actually the hard disks in the machines! It seems overkill is already here.

[Mr E]

Tampon said:

If I have a G laptop and a N router will I get any benefit over a G router ?

It won't work at the higher speed, so no point in bothering.
Stick with G.

[bogie]

Road2Ruin said:

bogie said:

you do understand that wireless is only about 50% effcient as a protocol?

so 54Mbps G will give 25Mbps max in ideal conditions......

what is reported by the adapter utility is usually the synchronisation bit rate at the physical layer (in this case between radios)

what you see in Windows, is at the application layer

as data travels up and down a protocol stack more data is added on/stripped off

so on ethernet, to transport 1500bytes of data is really say 1526 bytes

on wireless its way more ineffiecient (encryption, retransmissions etc) so you need to send nearly 2x as much data to transmit that 1500 bytes

this is known as how efficient a protocol is - or what the "protocol overhead is"

ethernet - 95%
wireless - 50% ish
powerline - 40-45% ish

etc

so if your connection says you synch at 40Mbps, that a real 20Mbps or about 3 MB/s on a copy n paste in Windows .....

A very good example. Interestingly enough tomshardware.co.uk did a test of gigabit ethernet setups and found the limiting factors was actually the hard disks in the machines! It seems overkill is already here.

yes thats correct, not many consumer hard drives can sustain 120MB/s ...I have SSDs in my PC, so fully utilise gig-e bandwidth, so much that I trunk 2 ports together to my switch, PC and NAS for a 2Gpbs connection

[bogie]

Dracoro said:

Road2Ruin said:

bogie said:

I can do 90Mbps N in the same room here, 75Mbps next door through one wall ......

Is that what the wireless reports or what you actually get? There will be a big difference. My G network says I am getting 40Mbps but on testing it I am getting 8Mbps.

How are you testing it?

nice n simple - do a copy n paste in Windows of a 600MB file, do it 5x and take an average and times by 8 to give me the bits per second

...I dont trust any of these utilities in Windows - most are meaningless unless you have an adapter with a calibrated driver/software and a proper sniffer e.g they are software controlled - a USB stick manufacturer can tell it to report whatever it likes to Windows, so it can light up 4 bars or 5 bars

I find measuring network throughput a better indication of real world performance than Windows telling me "Excellent"

[DonnyMac]

Mr E said:

Tampon said:

If I have a G laptop and a N router will I get any benefit over a G router ?

It won't work at the higher speed, so no point in bothering.
Stick with G.

Your G laptop will only take the G signal from a N router - so makes no difference.

But, many N routers come with a Wireless N usb stick - then you've turned your G laptop into a N laptop - cooking on gas!