Upgrading wireless card from G to N necessary?

[buildingacomputer]

BACKGROUND

Cable connection speed: 30 Mbps
Cable modem + Router = Ubee DDW3611 (DOCSIS 3.0 type), cable company's choice, set on 2.4 GHz (not dual band type)

Desktop 1: wired, torrent downloading (overseas tv shows and dramas)
Desktop 2: Wireless G, general internet browsing (a very old card)
Deaktop 3: wireless N, general internet browsing (just bought)

Occasional cell phones and guests' laptops: N, I suppose

1) Does the G card affect wired connection speed?
2) Does the G card affect overall wireless connection speed?
3) Will I gain anything from upgrading G to N?

EDIT: no gaming, no network hard disk/printer,

 

[SecurityTheatre]

BACKGROUND

Cable connection speed: 30 Mbps
Cable modem + Router = Ubee DDW3611 (DOCSIS 3.0 type), cable company's choice, set on 2.4 GHz (not dual band type)

Desktop 1: wired, torrent downloading (overseas tv shows and dramas)
Desktop 2: Wireless G, general internet browsing (a very old card)
Deaktop 3: wireless N, general internet browsing (just bought)

Occasional cell phones and guests' laptops: N, I suppose

1) Does the G card affect wired connection speed?
2) Does the G card affect overall wireless connection speed?
3) Will I gain anything from upgrading G to N?

EDIT: no gaming, no network hard disk/printer,

Yes.

You won't get even close to 30Mbps over a 2.4Ghz 802.11g connection. Get 5Ghz going (or at least n wireless).

For me, the 2.4Ghz spectrum near my home is saturated and almost unusable, even for simple things like Youtube, let alone torrets, etc.

I've upgraded to 5Ghz 802.11n 2.2 MIMO and went from like 2Mbps throughput on 802.11g to 75Mbps throughput on 802.11n.

Remember, just because you wifi says it's 54Mbps, doesn't mean it actually has comparable throughput to a 50Mbps wire.

On 2.4Ghz, divide by 5-6 to figure out your actual throughput.

If you want to be sure, do a speed test from one of your machines on wifi and then do the same test on a wire and see the difference.

 

[Smoove910]

your wireless devices will only go as fast as the slowest device (i.e. wireless G in your case). Get rid of the wireless G and at least go wireless N.

 

[alkemyst]

N is a big improvement over G.

 

[homebrew2ny]

With a 30 Mbps pipeline I say do not bother.

You will see nary an improvement in real world speed upgrading to N. If you had a pipeline of 50 or 75 or more then I would obviously say go for it based on the limitations of G.

 

[alkemyst]

With a 30 Mbps pipeline I say do not bother.

You will see nary an improvement in real world speed upgrading to N. If you had a pipeline of 50 or 75 or more then I would obviously say go for it based on the limitations of G.

First, with the overhead inherent to wireless G doesn't really scale to 30Mbps speeds esp if you have any distance from the source.

Wireless N improves range and throughput.

 

[homebrew2ny]

First, with the overhead inherent to wireless G doesn't really scale to 30Mbps speeds esp if you have any distance from the source.

Wireless N improves range and throughput.

Although there is some truth to what you say, it is vastly overstated. I stand by my contention that the difference would be mild to negligible at his current speed.

 

[VirtualLarry]

1) Does the G card affect wired connection speed?
2) Does the G card affect overall wireless connection speed?
3) Will I gain anything from upgrading G to N?

EDIT: no gaming, no network hard disk/printer,

1) no
2) yes
3) yes

There's no reason at all to be running G these days, unless you have a really old laptop with G built-in.
(Or a PS3, or Nintendo DS... or is the DS stuck on B?)

 

[alkemyst]

Although there is some truth to what you say, it is vastly overstated. I stand by my contention that the difference would be mild to negligible at his current speed.

I just recently went from 30Mbps to 50+. I gained a lot from going G to N long ago.

Keep in mind if there are 2.4GHz issues already, moving to 5GHz will solve them.

N products are so cheap now, it doesn't pay not too upgrade.

 

[bonehead123]

Get a dual band N router & cards for sure, and set it up so that the heaviest, most demanding traffic is on 5GHZ, and regular browsing etc is on the 2.4GHZ band. This is typically done in the "QoS" settings in your router's control panels...

I just completed this same upgrade in my house, due to the recent purchase of 2 chromecasts & 2 Roku's, in addition to the 3 laptops, 2 cell phones, 2 desktops (1 wired, 1 wireless), and 1 tablet that were there already....

After initially having all wireless devices using 2.4GHZ wireless connections, I put the 2 Roku's & the other desktop on cat 6, configured the streaming to 5GHZ, and the difference in performance was like night & day

 

[JackMDS]

Your question really applies to- 2) Does the G card affect overall wireless connection speed?

If you do not need more Speed for LAN File exchange then I do not think you should be bothered, leave it as is.