802.11A/B/G/N - What the Heck?

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Chronic_Sweg

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Apr 11, 2015
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I have done very little homework on this. I have a router , and I'm building a PC. I cant use Ethernet because the router is connected to my family PC and I'm not willing to move my PC. So I decided I would put a little chip in my computer. It's the TP-LINK TL-WDN4800 Dual Band Wireless N900 PCI Express Adapter. (I originally put a USB one , but someone on this forum suggested that). It says "Seamless compatibility with 802.11a/b/g/n products" on the product description on Amazon. I was wondering what the heck any of that means. I understand that the letters have to do with different protocols , that's it. So I was wondering , will it be able to connect to any router basically? I was thinking that router have different 'letters' (like a , b , etc) , and your adapter has to have that letter or better or all of them???? I'm so freaking confused right now? BTW : my router is the Netgear WNR2000 V2
 
Solution
kanewolf
802.11a is a 5Ghz standard. 802.11b and g are 2.4Ghz standards. 802.11n is a dual frequency standard.

The Wikipedia page gives lots of info -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#Protocol

So, by saying that your adapter is compatible with all those letters, the manufacturer is saying that you could connect at 2.4Ghz OR at 5Ghz and your router could support any one of those standards.

Your router is a 2.4Ghz 802.11n router. Your adapter will connect to it just fine. You won't be using the 5Ghz capabilities that you paid extra for because your router doesn't support it. You could upgrade your router in the future to a dual band router and be able to use 5Ghz.

To get the best compatibility and you should make sure your...
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kanewolf

kanewolf

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802.11a is a 5Ghz standard. 802.11b and g are 2.4Ghz standards. 802.11n is a dual frequency standard.

The Wikipedia page gives lots of info -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#Protocol

So, by saying that your adapter is compatible with all those letters, the manufacturer is saying that you could connect at 2.4Ghz OR at 5Ghz and your router could support any one of those standards.

Your router is a 2.4Ghz 802.11n router. Your adapter will connect to it just fine. You won't be using the 5Ghz capabilities that you paid extra for because your router doesn't support it. You could upgrade your router in the future to a dual band router and be able to use 5Ghz.

To get the best compatibility and you should make sure your router firmware is up to date.
 
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Puff3r

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Short answer is the letters designate different versions of the 802.11 networking protocol. The versions are increases in speed. As long as you have both devices configured to use the upper most shared speed, you will be fine. In most cases the receiver will default to scanning the incoming signal and matching it. Thus, if your router is set for transmission on the 802.11 n protocol, your receiver would either automatically detect and use that setting or need to be configured as such. A quick read of both manuals will tell you how to choose the protocol that best suits your needs and how to apply it. Also, you may want to take into consideration the thought of using a different channel than default if you live in an area with overlapping wireless signals. This can greatly help improve performance. This is a change you would make on the router only. Again the manual will give you details of how to change the channel. Many programs can scan the area for you to show you if there are multiple channels or overriding signals in the area. Inssider for android comes to mind as one.
 
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danny2000

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no, your adaptor is already able to use the lessor technologies: it is downward-capable, as are most adaptors, if not all now sold on the market.
Basically, if you had a router that only supported G, and you had an adaptor on your computer/laptop with N, it would only connect at G. Likewise, if you had a router that supported N, but your adaptor on your computer/laptop only supported G, then you would connect at G speeds; So the common dominator is what the HIGHEST speed EACH device supports. You are fine with your selections for now.
 
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danny2000

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Generally-speaking, upgrading the router with new tech, also involves upgrading the adaptors on devices, in order to take advantage of the speed increase of the router; Also, upgrading the speed of the network adaptor above what the router can handle, will no affect on your network/Internet speed to your device. Whatever is the lowest MAX speed of a device is(A; B; G;N150; N300;N400;N450; Ac 1900; etc, is what it uses. each device has a max.
 
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RealBeast

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It is best for your connection speeds if you can avoid supporting old standards: A, B, and G. If you can run N only and use WPA2 with AES encryption you will get better speed for your wireless connection. You are also fine with using N and AC if your adapters support AC.

(As an example supporting older wireless 2.4GHz standards below N restricts your maximum speed to 54Mbps, although the actual result will be far slower, I can give you links to Cisco white papers that will give you actual values at distances, but they may make your head explode).

The real question is are all of your devices able to use N or better connections?

Also, check to see what surrounding networks are using to avoid them as much as you can. Grab the free version of the wireless analyzer inSSIDer from HERE and see what channels are least used by strong wireless sources. And for 2.4GHz it is best if you can use a non-overlapping channel, so select from 1, 6, and 11. Look at THIS, the first two graphs to understand the idea of non-overlapping channels.
 
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