Routers – faster is better!?

Please, consumers, do not take your purchasing advice from Best Buy sales people… It has been the myth that you must buy a new digital TV before January 2009 (I’ll blog about that another day). Now sales people are pushing Wireless-N routers. I was looking in a sales circular lately and it has FAST (Wireless-G), FASTER (Wireless-Super G), FASTEST (Wireless-N). This is just so deceptive.

• Wireless-B has speeds up to 11 Mbps (don’t have newer security protocols)
• Wireless-G has speeds up to 54 Mbps
• Wireless-Super G (various names) has speeds up to 108 Mbps
• Wireless-N has speeds up to 108 Mbps (but better range than B/G)

Just for perspective here are internet speeds available in Western PA:

• Verizon $20/mo. and under DSL – 0.768 Mbps
• Verizon $35/mo. – 1.5 to 3.0 Mbps
• Verizon FiOS – 5.0 Mbps
• Comcast – 6.0 Mbps

So, what you’ll notice is that any of the router should be able to handle the internet speed with no problem. The higher speeds on the routers will only affect transfers of files between one computer and another on your internal network. Most users don’t do that, do Wireless-G should be all you would need.