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

outtatune

Vitor said:

 - 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.

There was a gorgeous McLaren in the car park at Aldi the day before yesterday, but I don't think it got the driver there any quicker than if they'd been in a VW Polo.

Cisco001

Vitor said:

 - 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.

But it doesn't matter how quick is the internet if the bottleneck is hardware itself.
My dad has a 14 years old thinkpad with SSD in it. It is so slow even with plug in 1GB internet.

bob2302

prowla said:

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.

Beyond a fairly low bit-rate the perception of speed mostly depends on latency and the time taken for the software to react.

High bit-rates matter more for large sustained transfers like big downloads and P2P. If that matters to you, I suggest moving the pc temporally and doing a direct WiFi and ethernet comparison before deciding.

prowla

Cisco001 said:

Vitor said:

 - 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.

But it doesn't matter how quick is the internet if the bottleneck is hardware itself.
My dad has a 14 years old thinkpad with SSD in it. It is so slow even with plug in 1GB internet.

1GB (gigabyte) internet is pretty darned fast and probably rather expensive! :-)