My ISP (Internet Service Provider) tells me that my Down speed is 10 Mbps (Megabits per second) and Up speed 1 Mbps. But when I'm searching for a wifi router, the average speed is 300 - 400 Mbps... Do I benefit from this extra 290-390 Mbps, if I'm on the internet?
2 Answers
Wifi is a bit of a finicky beast. There are a few important things to consider, not just the internet speed.
- Wifi is by design, half duplex. Believe it or not, this leads to tons of communication problems. The extra bandwidth and speed helps to allieviate bottlenecks.
- Wifi routers have a lot of overhead to deal with. They have to broadcast SSIDs and deal with responding to broadcast requests. Once again, this adds to bandwidth utilization.
- Range. The listed maximums are at the best antenna rate and sitting right next to the AP. You will never get those listed maximums, and any device (like a phone) that transmits at lower data rates or from further away will use up more airtime.
So, no, you will never see any use of the 300Mb/s from your 10Mb/s internet. However, if you have 4 or 5 devices all communicating with the wireless AP from different distances and on different speeds, you can easily start seeing wireless congestion without ever even maxing out your internet bandwidth. Just some food for thought.
No but you will benefit from the additional bandwidth on your local area network.
answered Aug 5, 2015 at 15:31
