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I'm looking at a laptop purchase and considering whether to pay more for a card that does 802.11 n as well as 802.11a,b,g.
All the pulic networks I see always run 802.11b. I know a and g have more throughput but I seldom maximize the throughput of b. So my home network also runs b.
But more and more access points offer n. Probably the most important improvement would be reliability, consistency between different dongles and adapters (sometimes different brands are flaky together), or coverage. If n really works at greater distances, it would have an advantage that a and g never offered over b.
Unfortunately the marketing on the boxes is mostly "new and improved" sales-speak obviously written by someone who doesn't even know what the product does.
I'm interested in official spec answers and your personal experience. Enlighten the public about the real differences.
802.11b is not dead; the 1, 2, 5.5, and 11 speeds of 802.11 b/g are all from 802.11b. And the beacons used by 802.11g are all at 1Mbps, so even a pure 802.11g network still needs 802.11b. – CesarB – 2009-09-29T02:01:24.493
Possibly true, but you're not going to be able to buy a 802.11b network card or router so as a separate technology it's dead. – Col – 2009-09-29T07:24:41.247