I recently upgraded to fibre broadband, and it seems that I can only get the full 50Mbps (All I was willing to pay for) when I'm on the LAN. So one laptop with a 54Mbps adapter speedtests at ~20Mbps and another with a 300Mbps adapter speedtests at ~40Mbps. Which is ok, but how do people with 152Mbps broadband get anything close to that with a laptop? Even running full pelt a 450Mbps adapter would only draw in around 60Mbps by my reckoning, so how is it done? It's been a bit of a learning curve regardless, and I'm left with very few options as my ThinkPad is locked to only a few adapters (or requires more work than I'm willing to do to change).
Depending on the model of your Thinkpad, there may be a custom BIOS available to allow you to install whatever card you like in, like an 867 Mbps Wifi AC card if your router supports it for instance.
Cheers, I'd read that, in fact I'd read it before I bought the laptop but only remembered after trying to fit an adapter. And it does all this with just the two antennas that I have? It seems that instead of modifying the BIOS, it's possible to modify the vendor ID on the adapter, changing it to one that is allowed. This might be a goer!
I'd recommend this card if you do wanna go ahead with it. Ebay do list some Lenovo versions but I'm not if that means they are on the whitelist or not. You may need this too if your current card is a full height one.
+1 on the Intel wireless card, Intel cards from my experience has always given the most stable and reliable connection compared to Atheros/Realtek solutions, and the drivers tend to be quite good and fuss free. I can get my full 50Mb/s out of an Intel N-6235, and one of my older laptops with a 54Mb/s adaptor can only get ~22Mb/s, which seems to be the max speed for that. Do you sit far away from your router or something?
I'm sat about 3m away from it 95% of the time. The NAS and TV are on the gigabit LAN so that's all sorted, it's just this ThinkPad I need upgraded. I haven't read up on wireless since the choices were A/B/G so it's been a bit of a learning curve. I'll check over the compatibility of the Intel card and see; if it can be made to work I'd be willing to go to the effort. Cheers for the replies
I have only had 54Mb/s G adaptors and my experience of them is that they max out at 22Mb/s, usually if you have a 50Mb/s connection then 150Mb/s N adapters with a N router should be OK unless you sit far away from the router.
22Mb/s is exactly what I'm seeing on the 54Mb G adapter, the 150Mb/s N adapter in my work laptop hits ~40Mb/s so it's not quite up to scratch. It also hovers from 130Mb/s to 144Mb/s for some reason (power saving?). Never thought I'd see the day when my WiFi was the bottleneck, I used to be happy to connect to the internet at 52Kbps
For the record, your LAN (local area network) is everything on your side of your gateway device (typically the modem or router). In other words, both your wireless and your Ethernet are part of your "LAN". That is, "LAN" does NOT mean wired. LAN is your network and your networked devices connect to your LAN via Ethernet and/or WiFi (or even Token Ring or Powerline). And while you can have a wireless network and an Ethernet network, they both make up your LAN. Note this is a common mistake and most likely caused by misguided marketing weenies misusing technical terms - again. Like "technically", there's no such thing as a "wireless router" but that's for another discussion. This can happen with "crowded" wireless environments. This can include you neighborhood - if you live in a large apartment complex where many of the tenants have wireless in their homes, for example - can result in poor wireless performance. For this, you can often change channels in your WAP (wireless access point) admin menu which is often integrated with your router or modem. Wireless performance is also affected by EMI/RFI - interference from other nearby devices like microwave ovens, TVs, airport radars, HAM radios, and cell/MW relay towers - not to mention even wires in the walls, floors and ceiling - especially if those walls, floors and ceilings are between your device and your WAP. Note too that more and more "smart" devices are showing up in homes that use your wireless access. These include smart TVs, Blu-ray players, Hulu and Roku streamers, and smart phones. Back to that "wireless router" for a second. Note these devices are really 3 discrete, but integrated network appliances that just happen to share a case, power supply and circuit board - just like your computer's motherboard includes a sound card, network interface card, and maybe a graphics card all on the same circuit board. All separate devices integrated on the same board. The 3 devices in a wireless router are the router, the WAP, and an Ethernet switch with (typically) 4 Ethernet ports on the back, and 1 internal Ethernet port for the integrated WAP. Many IPSs now provide 4-way integrated devices that include the modem, and even 5-way for discrete VoIP phone service. Your WAP is connecting all your wifi devices to your "LAN" through that single internal Ethernet port in the "wireless router". So if you have several wireless devices in your home all connecting to the wireless side of your LAN at the same time, that sure can impact your wireless performance. Ethernet connected devices, however, generally go through their own dedicated Ethernet port on the back of your router. They are not sharing the available bandwidth as "ALL" connected wireless devices do. Because most Ethernet interfaces these days support 1Gbit/sec per port (or at least 100Mb/s if older devices), and all the wireless devices on the wireless side of your LAN are sharing that single 56Mb/s it is no wonder you get better performance with Ethernet.
