internet speed/ vs router speed

[shusty]

I'm a little confused as far as what a router speed means for my computer. I have a really good internet connection (20 Mbps) and I want to go wireless if I can do it without compromising much speed. Its probably obvious but does the router speed determine the actual speed of your internet, or just how fast you can share files or other information between computers on your network? From just an internet browsing standpoint would it be dumb to get an airport express with only wireless g (I really want airtunes) as opposed to the extreme? Thanks.

 

[Techpriest]

Think of it as lots of pipes hooked together. How much water you can get through it is determined by the smallest pipe.

If you are 20mb from router to provider you will be fine as long as you keep all other pipes 20mb or larger. 802.11g is 54mb so you should be fine. 802.11b is 11mb, so you will not be as fast as you could be. Keep in mind these are theoretical speeds, in reality g is more like 30 and b is more like 6.

There are other standards, just make sure the one you get is a bigger pipe than 20mb.

 

[shusty]

I may be wrong but I thought router speeds were in mega BITS per second. My connection is 20 mega BYTES per second, I guess I should have written 20 MB, which is why Im curious if that means Ill lose some internet speed. Everything you said made sense though if they are actually the same thing, I could be wrong.

 

[g5_rocks]

On the router 54mb means 54 megabits. Divide 54 megabits by aprox. 8, and you get 6.75 megabyte/second. Which isn't very realistic. Second of all 20megabit connection!? My school district has a 20megabit stable connection, an we have 1to1 laptops at the junior high, as well as other schools with total over 3k users, and the price for that kind of connection is around $40k. I think you would want to double check that 20mb, and keep in mind when the ISP's are advertising those are burst speed, meaning it is very unlikely that you would ever reach such a speed.

 

[shusty]

Im paying about 100 a month just for internet access. I was wrong, my connection isn't in megabytes but I am paying for 20 megabits and I'm sure of that. In actual speed tests I get about 17-18 megabits per second. The service I get is pretty new for residential areas I think, its fiber optic all the way to my neighborhood, maybe even to my house I'm not sure. I'm not an expert on this and you seem to know what your talking about so I could be wrong, my ISP is surewest if you want to look it up I dont know if I can post a link to their site but it shouldn't be hard to figure out. Maybe your school has a 20 mega BYTE connection which would explain that cost because surewest also offers a 50 mbit connection and it doesnt even come close to ONE thousand dollars, and if it is false advertising I seriously doubt they could advertise a speed more than twice what you'd actually get. Either way, you sound like you can answer my original question which is if the wireless router's speed effects internet browsing or just the information you pass between computers on the network, mainly just comparing G and N.