Will an old wireless pc card be able to handle modern internet speeds?

anotherquestion

Hi folks,

I have an old almost 15 year old desktop from Pcspecialist, still going strong with this wireless card.

Wireless Network Card

WIRELESS N 300Mbps PCI CARD (£16)

As I have an Ethernet connection from the the ONT direct to the PC I have removed the card.

I am with EE using a BT hub 2 router 500Mbps down Full Fibre/

Going to change to Youfibre because of less cost, to a 900 down package.

Their Ont will be in a different room, so I need to put a wireless card in the Desktop again.

Am I right in thinking that old card will not support the higher speed, only to a max of 300, and if possible could you link me towards a card that will.

Many Thanks.

On-the-coast

...unless it was particularly high end, the limiting factor is more likely to be your 15 year old PC.
I wouldn't worry about upgrading my wifi card until i'd tested it and found it limiting (in the real world).

Before you do anything, check what speed your wifi access point is capable of delivering (it might well be less than 900Mbps, especially if sharing with other devices).  Also "a different room" will lead to drop in effective receive rate anyway... you'll only know when you test.

What are you doing on your PC that requires > 300Mbps connection speed?  i can't think of much tbh.

vacheron

Agree with above.  If you are just browsing, gaming and streaming netflix / iplayer etc, 300mbps is more than enough. Unless you are wanting to download 10GB+ games from Steam in a hurry etc, you won't notice any difference. 

IMHO, 90-95% of broadband households could run from a 30-50mbps service and would never notice any difference.

Also be aware that with a 15+ year old PC, you may even have a 100Mpbs ethernet port rather than a gigabit port, meaning that your wireless N card could actually be faster!  

Vitor

Chances are you'll need to a new router and card which both support WiFi 6 and have 'beam forming' antennae to get near gigabit WiFi.

Something like TP-Link AX3000 Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.2 PCIe Adapter and TP-Link WiFi 6 OneMesh Router, AX3000 Mbps Gigabit VPN Router, Dual-Core CPU Fibre Router

DullGreyGuy

Presumably the card supports 802.11n on 2.4ghz and 5ghz but the maximum speed will depend on its channel bonding capabilities, could be anywhere between 300mb/s to 600mb/s. No mater what its max is going to be the reality will be lower especially with it having a wall between the router and computer. 

Your use case however is unlikely to need anything close the maximum speeds, 4k/UHD content from streaming networks work on 25mb/s but recommend 50mb/s, most games are 12-25mb/s. It's only big downloads you'd benefit from higher speeds but even then many servers throttle traffic so you may still not get close to your max speed. 

Higher speed routers are, in my opinion, much more about concurrent user abilities than individual users.

anotherquestion

Thanks very much for replies. Overall its more of a money saving thing really, Current cost for 500 down with EE is £38.25 a month, will increase by £3 next April, Youfibre can do 900 down for one of these prices either £29.99 a month or £31.99 a month, no mid contract hikes. I think the £31.99 is their new price.

As long as I can get current speed or thereabouts wirelessly I will be happy enough.

It wont be possible to put Youfibre Ont in same room as current Openreach is at the moment (back of house beside desktop) So Youfibre Ont will have to go in front room of house.

Another thing is I find the BT Hub 2 very good for getting the signal wirelessly around the house, I can't use that with Youfibre, They use an EEro router (Mesh possible to add extra units for £7 a month) I have tried an EEro with Talktalk several years ago and was not impressed with it.

Obviously I don't want to pay an extra £7 a month for more EEro units ( I have been told if you ask nicely, they will add one or two for free)

Another reason I wouldn't mind changing is they will buy out my existing EE contract up to a value of £300, my get out fee is £284 after contacting EE.

Newcad

vacheron said:

IMHO, 90-95% of broadband households could run from a 30-50mbps service and would never notice any difference.

I totally agree..

Many are falling for the marketing hype and overpaying for vastly more 'speed'* than they need or will ever use.

*Mbps is actually a measure of Capacity and not Speed, (more misleading marketing), per-second can mean either.
eg. a bigger pipe can pass more litres per second of water than a smaller one, the water isn't flowing from one end to the other any faster just more litres of it can flow at the same speed at the same time.
If you have one tap (computer) at one end water (data) won't flow any faster, but several taps (computers) can be connected at once and all flow at the same speed at the same time.

This is a money saving forum - save your money and don't pay for more that you need.

Cisco001

Why do need to worry the speed of internet on a 15 years old PC?
The PC itself is slow anyway...

Vitor

 - Mbps is actually a measure of Capacity and not Speed, (more misleading marketing) - 

Err, no. Mbps (Megabits per second) is like how fast a car can go. If a car can go really fast, it can get you to places quicker. Some people might think Mbps is about how much stuff you can fit on the internet, but that's not true. It's really just about how fast the internet can bring things to you, just like how fast a car can drive.

Mbps stands for Megabits per second, where "per second" directly indicates that this is a measurement of speed—specifically, the rate at which data is transferred over a network connection.

prowla

Well, the actual Mbps achievable is defined by the (throughput) capacity of the various connections via which the data passes. Of course, it's not the (storage) capacity.

prowla

As for the old PC, 300Mbps is quite a speed; as others have suggested, the PC itself might be the limiting factor, plus whether your workload demands much higher.