Airport extreme base station - upgrade worthwhile?

Question

I have discovered that my ISP has capped my broadband at 2mbps so I am changing to one promising up to 8mbps. Now my attention is engaged, I have started looking at a new wireless router but am confused about speeds. Is there any point in upgrading my old airport base station to the 802.11n?
My present one says it broadcasts up to 54mbps which sounds way faster than anything coming down my phone line.
As I see it, I would be putting a 6 lane highway at the end of a country lane, so I must be missing out on something.
Please tell me if I am misunderstanding something.
Cheers
Ian

Answer 1

The only advantage you would gain by moving to an "n" router would be faster communications on your local area network. In other words, if you want to copy files back and forth from a computer to a hard drive, etc, your current limit is 54 Mbps. In real life, the actual transfer speed is about 1/2 to 2/3 of this figure.
If you move up to an "n" router. It will have speeds up to 130 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band and up to 300 Mbps on the 5 GHz band. Copies will go much faster at the higher speeds, anywhere from 3-5 times faster or more on average.
If you plan to stream high definition video over your wireless, the higher speeds will definitely improve the quality of the experience.
As you note, your current 54 Mbps router is much faster than your internet connection. The internet connection is almost always going to be the "choke point" on any home network. If your service is limited to 8 Mpbs, that is the maximum speed you will get. It will make no difference whether you use a 54 Mbps router or higher speed "n" router on this type of connection.
You did not mention whether or not a "Guest" network feature would be important to you, or whether the newer dual band routers would allow your devices to connect more effectively, so we can advise on that subject.
Message was edited by: Bob Timmons
Message was edited by: Bob Timmons