Getting confused with wifi speeds and routers!

[mpj88]

Hi, i currently have a standard o2 router and im getting sick of the conncetion dropping and other various problems.

I have been looking at various N routers as when i'm back at my parents i have to access my NAS over wireless. On standard wireless this struggles with any HD playback. Hence my attention focusing on N routers.

I already have a netgear wn111 adapter.

I have been looking at Draytek routers as i've heard these are renowned for being very high quality bits of kit. Should a 2710n or 2820n router give me 300Mbits/s over wireless with my netgear adaptor?

I dont really understand what the differences are with N. e.g. Draft 1, Draft 2, full N, dual band etc.

On the netgear website it recommends i get a netgear WNR854T router for optimal speeds. However this is quite cheap compared to the draytek kit. Can pick one up for around the £20-30 mark where as Draytek stuff being closer to £100

Would a netgear one do the job? As far as i can see i dont understand why i would spend more. I've had netgear routers/equipment in the past and i've been quite happy with it.

Am i also correct in thinking that if i'm running at 300Mbits/s wireless a 100 base network connection will limit it? So therefore i need a gigabit connection on the router

Thank you in advance for any help/tips!

 

[mpj88]

Scratch the WNR854T just realised its just a router. No modem!

 

[Dist]

The draft 802.11n stuff is most likely old devices from when the 802.11n standard hadn't fully been standardized, although is still usable. As for the dual band, 802.11n allows for the use of the 5 GHz frequency as well as 2.4 GHz, a dual band rounter is simply one that can use either (and some routers can do simultanious dual band, allowing for some devices to use 5 GHz while older devices can just use 2.4 GHz).

As for 100 Mb Ethernet being a bottleneck, it may be but 300 Mb wifi requires 2 spatial streams which some devices will not be capable of and so would be limited to 150 Mb, and once you take signal quality into account and such 100 Mb Ethernet may not be such a bad bottleneck. That being said though switching to Gigabit Ethernet is cheap these days, and there is a wide choice of 802.11n routers with Gigabit Ethernet ports on it.