A few draft n questions

[Wigster]

Hi,

I have a few general questions:

1) I am wondering whether the latest generations of routers is still bad at mixing n and g signals.

I have a pretty simple network, but one client (a Squeezebox) needs to be on a wireless g network.

2) Is it really worth worrying about the gigabit LAN switch or the router, if I have my server (with a gigabit port) located on the LAN and the only client requiring real bandwidth is the laptop which will be on the wireless.

Will I max out a 100 Mbit LAN connection or is that just marketing?

3) I have an Intel Wifilink 5300 card in my laptop. Are there chipsets/brands with which this card works better and ones in which it is worse?

 

[thiggins]

1) I am wondering whether the latest generations of routers is still bad at mixing n and g signals.

Yes. Draft 11n will always have this effect to some extent since when slower 802.11b/g clients are active, a draft 11n router must wait longer for them to send/receive data at a slower rate. Note that performance is degraded only when both draft 11n and 802.11b/g clients are active at the same time.

I have a pretty simple network, but one client (a Squeezebox) needs to be on a wireless g network.

Unfortunately, streaming devices are not good to mix because of their constant use of the network. If the Squeezebox is on, you will get significantly reduced performance on the draft 11n clients.

2) Is it really worth worrying about the gigabit LAN switch or the router, if I have my server (with a gigabit port) located on the LAN and the only client requiring real bandwidth is the laptop which will be on the wireless.

Will I max out a 100 Mbit LAN connection or is that just marketing?

Your wireless connnection will be the weakest link and it's unlikely that you will approach 100 Mbps speeds. If you have no wired gigabit Ethernet clients then the gigabit switch is a waste.

3) I have an Intel Wifilink 5300 card in my laptop. Are there chipsets/brands with which this card works better and ones in which it is worse?

The Intel 5300 is a decent choice. We now use it as the standard test client for our wireless testing.