Don't use Wireless-G!

First a short history of wireless technologies:

The wireless technology standard is known as 802.11 with different versions appending a letter to the standard. The first version that became popular, and is still the most widely used standard, is known as 802.11b. It allows wireless transfer rates at 11Mbps. Common wired Ethernet networks (such as a home or office network) use CAT5 cables, which allow transmission speeds of 100Mbps (also known as Fast Ethernet). The next obvious step for wireless technology was to obtain faster speed. So 802.11a was born. It allowed transmission of speeds up to 54Mbps. Great. But the only problem was, it wasn't compatible with 802.11b! So all those wireless cards everyone owned, including the ones built into laptops, wouldn’t work with networks using 802.11a. That's the reason 802.11a never really caught on. Then 802.11g was developed. It allowed for transmission speeds of up to 54Mbps, but it was also compatible with 802.11b! Wireless networks that ran 802.11g hardware would still allow users with the older, and slower, 802.11b network cards to access the wireless network. Everyone was happy.

Now here is where my ranting comes in:

First of all, broadband connections (DSL and Cable Modem) installed in your home or office never reach even close to 11Mbps speeds! So if you have a Wireless-G router and a Wireless-G network card in your laptop, your access to the internet will be exactly the same as it would with Wireless-B! The bottleneck lies in your connection to the internet, not your wireless hardware! So what's Wireless-G good for? Well, let’s say you want to transfer files from your wireless laptop to your PC in the next room. In this case, there is no bottleneck. Wireless-G will allow for MUCH faster transfer speeds because the maximum speed on your home network is probably 100Mbps. Using an 11Mbps Wireless-B network connection to transfer files over a 100Mbps wired connection (home/office network) would obviously slow you down quite a bit. But how often do you transfer files between your laptop and your PC? And how often are those files really big? When I need to transfer really big files, I just connect my laptop to my wired network, which gives me full 100Mbps speeds.

OK, by now you might be wondering what the big deal is and why I'm so much against Wireless-G. Let me explain: All of the new wireless routers sold today allow you to put the router in one of three different modes. Wireless B, Wireless G, and Mixed. The latter, as you may have guessed, allows network cards of both types (Wireless-B and Wireless-G) to access the wireless network. It doesn't discriminate. If you choose Wireless-G, then only Wireless-G connections will be allowed. The same goes for Wireless-B. Choosing the Mixed mode however, can cause problems. Why? Because the router has to figure out which mode you're using to connect. If it's wrong, or if it gets confused, you can suddenly be dropped from the network for no apparent reason.

I have seen this behavior on both Windows and Linux platforms, with a wide range of network cards. What a headache! And for what? Extra speed that rarely gets used? Now you might see why I strongly suggest changing your wireless router's mode to Wireless-B. That way, it has the most compatibility with wireless cards and is least likely to drop users from the network. It also means fewer things to worry about if you're already having issues getting your wireless network to work properly.