When I got my new laptop, (the other one I think the logic board died in it), I decided that I needed to upgrade the wireless in the house. I was using a Linksys WRT54G router, which I had been using for about 6 or 7 years now. It worked well, however the wireless was a little slow. So I decided to get a new 802.11N router, to “speed up” the wireless stuff in my house. I kept the Linksys running for those devices that don’t support 802.11N. Some people may ask why, well I locked the new router (Buffalo Technology Nfiniti Wireless-N High Power Router & Access Point WZR-HP-G300NH) so that it would only let 802.11N devices connect to it. That is so it would remain the fastest wireless since when you have it in mixed mode, it may step down to lower speeds.
So just how much faster is the N over the G? I did a FTP test from one of my servers that has a Gig ethernet connection. (The new router also has a gig switch in it, whereas the old Linksys only had a 100mb switch in it.)
Using the old Linksys WRT54G router/wireless I transferred a 378Mb file, the result: 397,127,468 bytes received in 04:40 (1.34 MiB/s).
Then I switched to the new Buffalo router and transferred the same file: 397,127,468 bytes received in 01:13 (5.14 MiB/s
As you can see it is almost 4 times faster than the 802.11G router. I think it was well worth it. As now I can stream video wirelessly and it doesn’t cut out and have to buffer like it did on the G router. Another nice thing was the Buffalo router came with DD-WRT already installed as the “Professional Firmware”. Most people who are not technically inclined would find DD-WRT probably way more complicated than is needed for their simple network. But for me, it is awesome that you can customize it, and do a lot more stuff than the “user friendly” firmware supports.