bermudapineapple
I understand the difference in data rate (for example, n being better than g, and g being better than b), but what happens if you configure your router to broadcast all three simultaneously?
From what I understand, it is a common misconception that if you configure your router to broadcast more than one type of signal, it will broadcast the slowest of the signals to all devices, irrespective of what speeds the devices may individually be capable of handling.
Instead, what actually happens is that the router, being only able to broadcast to only one client at a time, will become preoccupied with that client and thus may seem slower when a request is made from another, faster device. So for example, if an old laptop that can only connect to b-level frequencies is connected to a router and is transferring data and then a laptop which can transmit at the n-level connects to that same router as well, it would have to wait for the older laptop to finish the data transfer in order for it to be able to begin its data transfer. In this way, the user of the faster laptop will misinterpret this and believe that their laptop connection has been throttled down to b-level speeds. In reality, however, the router is giving each and every client the maximum speed that client can handle.
Is this correct or am I missing something?
AvoK95
The reason why routers send multiple types of signals is so that older devices that don't support newer signals can still be able to connect to the router. Devices that support newer signal types will connect through that type while older ones will connect through older types.
(As far as I know, I never got too deep in networking)
chanklish
When both 802.11b and 802.11g clients are connected to an 802.11g router, the performance of the 802.11g clients can suffer. In the worst case, all 802.11g clients will slow down to have the same network speed as the 802.11b clients. More typically the 802.11g clients experience some degradation in performance, but they still perform noticeably faster than their 802.11b counterparts.
bermudapineapple
Thanks for the answers. chanklish, that's what I heard was a misconception. The faster connection to a device is not slowed down if a another device with a slower connection connects to the router. All that happens is that the router now has two clients to send data to and this creates the illusion that the g connection is slower.