Does 802.11n give a speed boost on the iPad?

Question

I did some testing to see if I'd get a speed boost by enabling 802.11n on my Belkin F5D8233-4 router, which supports 802.11n draft specification. I have Verizon FIOS with 25Mbps download/upload. I also have the Verizon router, which only supports 802.11b/g, and I can switch which router I'm connected to in order to compare speeds of 802.11n and 802.11g. All tests were done less than 3 feet from either router.
Bottom line is that the iPad doesn't get any speed boost by using 802.11n, at least by using speedtest.net to do the testing.
The test I used was with the speedtest app for the iPhone. I made the Belkin a pure 11n router, and ran that app from the iPad. So the connection had to be 802.11n. Then I connected the iPad to my Verizon router, which had to be 802.11g, and saw virtually no difference.
I did the same test with a Windows laptop from my job that supports 802.11n. It connected locally to the Belkin router at 72Mbps according to the internal utility. Testing using speedtest.net indicated that using the 802.11n connection on the Belkin was 50% faster than the 802.11g connection on the Verizon router. (About 30Mbps for Belkin/802.11n compared to 20Mbps for Verizon/802.11g for downloads).
But with the iPad, doing the same test (switching from Belkin router to Verizon router), the speed didn't change. It actually seemed a little slower when I was on 802.11n, but repeated tests showed some variability, and the average was about 19Mbps.
I realize that the overall speed for the iPad when I'm in my house will get throttled by the FIOS connection max of 25Mbps (although it's interesting that with my MacMini, and the Windows laptop, when connected via 100baseT, I get 30Mbps from FIOS when they promise 25Mbps!). But I can't get the good results from the iPad using 802.11n that I see with the Windows laptop. I'd like to try a local speedtest using the local LAN. I installed Speedtest MINI on the MacMini, enabling the Mac as a server, and the Windows laptop did 72Mbps on the local LAN. But Speedtest MINI requires Flash in the browser, so I can't do that test on the iPad. And the Speedtest app for iPhone doesn't let you pick a local URL for the server.
So I'm now pretty sure that 802.11n isn't really working right on the iPad with my Belkin router, in terms of delivering increased performance. I've read other posts where people have looked at the transmit rate from the router side, but I really wish I could look at the transmit rate from the iPad (like I do in Mac OS X, or in Windows) to verify.
To be sure, I'd like to run a speedtest on my local LAN from the iPad. Has anyone been able to actually do some kind of test that verifies the speed of an iPad connection on a local LAN, and does that verification from the iPad, and not the router?
And finally, has anyone ever done a test that verifies that 802.11n from an iPad delivers a speed boost compared to 802.11g? Are there specific requirements on the router side that need to be satisfied so that the iPad gets a boost? I've read elsewhere where someone said that you only get the boost if using Apple's Airport Extreme as the router (so that you can't really get 802.11n on a non-Apple router), and I think I saw someone say that the router has to support communication over 5.0Ghz for the iPad to be fast on 802.11n. Has Apple ever said what are the real requirements for the iPad to be faster on 802.11n versus 802.11g?

Answer 1

To the contrary, my experience is that the "G" standard on WiFi provided MUCH faster speeds than the "N" standard on Wi-Fi.  It makes no sense, I know, but it is true.
I was having horribly slow Wi-Fi speeds on my iPad2, despite a fast cable modem connection and a "N" generation Linksys wireless router (maybe 2-3 yrs old).  Was achieving speeds of only 1.3Mbs -- slow enough that you couldn't watch YouTube videos.  From hunting around on the web, I came across the suggestion to manually set the Wi-Fi router to the "G" standard (ie downgrade it from the faster "N" standard).  Remarkably, I did it and it worked like a charm.  I now get Wi-Fi speeds of about 12 or 13 Mbs, or 10x what I was getting before.  It is an easy fix.  And also I think the "G" standard is capable of 50Mbs so even though it is a slower and older standard, it is still way faster than anything you are likely to achieve as a home user.   I think there is some glitch or oddity in the iPad and iPad2 which can cause it to perform very poorly with older "N" standard WiFi routers.  New ones don't seem to have a problem.