11b 0r 54g? Which d'ya think for me?

Hi all
I'm torn between going for the newer 54g or the older 11b wireless set up for
my impending ADSL home set up.
I initially thought I'd pay the extra for the 54g but it is 'significantly'
dearer to get everything from scratch for this rather than 11b stuff, which
in itself, is quite a bit of outlay that I'm gonna have to convince my 'other
half' is necessary for when we get our exchange enabled - she's not
intertested in the least in these sort of things
I'm wondering if it's a bit of 'overkill' in getting the 54g - sure it would
be nice to have the extra speed for when I transfer files from one PC to the
other, but apart from pictures from my digital camera that I will no doubt
want to move about from time to time, there will not be THAT many times I'll
need to transfer large files!
While on the subject, so I can get an idea of the differences in the
speed/time factors of the two standards, if I wanted to send a full 128mb CF
card full of images from one PC to the other, how long will it take to this
with an 11b based system compared to a 54g one?
That would help me make my mind up a great deal if I knew the differences! If
it's not ridiculously longer for 11b, I think that would do me coz my main
priority is to be able to access the ADSL from my second PC upstairs and 11b
is more than fast enough for, at the most, 2mb BB access that I may
eventually end up with!
Thanks for any help you can give me in deciding which way to go with
Phil

 

The practicality is that unless you have real good signal between the two
PCs, the connection speed may very well be less than 11 Mbps - mine is 1
Mbps, for example. And that will not affect your Internet unless you have
more than 1 Mbps service, but will affect the file transfer.

 

Thanks for the reply Dave
I know about the signal strength and how it can vary, you must have a weak
signal and there's nothing to say mine won't be that weak too, though 3mb/s
isn't too much too expect, but if I was to get the same sort of throughput as
you and I wanted to transfer 120mb, would it take me appx 120 secs (@
1mb/sec?)If not, how long appx?
TIA

 

In PhilM

It'd take 960 secs as the speeds are generally reported in megabits, file
sizes are in megabytes. 8 bits to a byte, therefore takes 8x as long as you
guessed.

 

Cheers Khyle
I'd forgotten about the bytes and bits anomaly! I see what you mean now and
it does throw a different perspective on the time scale invloved in
transfers...... Dave does have a low throughput though - am I right or is
that the average?
I sorta assumed the average for a normal mid-80's designed type of house
(brick outer skin, breeze-block inner with the usual plasterboard or stud
interior walls) was about 3mb/s for the 11b standard....any examples of any
other sort of throughputs in their houses appreciated!
TIA

 

Hi

large 4 year old 5 bed house - I get 11mb with good or excellent signal
strength when connected from my study to a laptop in the kitchen - approx 40
feet. Also get good signal and from bedroom upstairs at opposite end of
house (say 50 foot).

Kitchen laptop has a netgear 11b pcard, upstairs using a dell centrino 500m
with built in 11b and the pc in the study has a net gear usb 11b adaptor -
currently connected peer to peer but I am about to buy a router/ap as adsl
is due in 3 months.

I regularly sync the a mydoc sub folder with 800mb of work on it - this
took a while initially but now is just a few seconds as it only syncs the
changes (using folder match).

As for speed of 120mb in one hit my guess would be 3 / 4 minutes. I have
no experience of 11g but would guess it will be a little quicker although
not by a huge factor - also if you use usb adaptors make sure the ports are
usb 2 compatible. Also if you connect an 11b device into an 11g network it
all (I think) works at 11b speeds.

I went for the 11b stuff because of the dell notebook and the fact that the
2 apaptors only cost 30 quid each.

 

Thanks for that Ian ;-)