Single vs Dual Band Wireless

[TooNice]

I am configuring a new laptops, and have the following options in terms of wireless card:
http://www.intel.com/products/wirele.../130/index.htm
http://www.intel.com/products/wirele...6230/index.htm

It's only about £12 for the upgrade, but I am wondering under what circumstances will there be a real benefit. Thanks.

Edit: That title should've said Single vs Dual Band wireless. Oops.

[Amended for you. Admin]

[watercooled]

Single antenna offers a theoretical speed of 150Mbps when using N and a compatible router, dual offers 300Mbps, again with a compatible router. Of course you'll see nothing like that in real-world throughout. Both those cards include a Bluetooth radio, if you don't need you could go for something like the 4965AGN.

[ik9000]

You want the dual band. It's faster. This article explains it all:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/01/h...our-downloads/

[ik9000]

Single band offers a theoretical speed of 150Mbps when using N and a compatible router, dual offers 300Mbps, again with a compatible router. Of course you'll see nothing like that in real-world throughout. Both those cards include a Bluetooth radio, if you don't need you could go for something like the 4965AGN.

the people in the link I gave recorded 14.2MB/s as opposed to 487KB/s - that's a massive increase, from 3Mb/s to 120Mb/s in their situation. Still worth having the dual band even if it doesn't run at it's peak theoretical speeds. As the article points out, the 2.4GHz single band is cluttered with many other devices, whereas the 5GHz band is free from this interference.

[watercooled]

Dual antenna and dual band are being confused here. Dual antenna is what I assumed the OP meant, considering the links i.e. 150 (1x1) vs 300 Mbps (2x2) links speed. Moving to 5GHz in theory shouldn't make any difference but if your area has a high noise floor on 2.4GHz you may notice an improvement. On the other hand, if your neighbours have had the same idea and moved to 5GHz, the opposite is true. Being higher frequency, 5GHz is less able to penetrate walls so the range in a house in theory will be less than 2.4GHz. I think that article you linked involved testing in the same room as the router. 2.4 vs 5 can only be judged at the location, it's impossible to simply say one will be better than the other.
The OP will need to check the router to see if it supports any of the above, it's no good just having a card that supports it.

[ik9000]

sure but dual band will give the option of running at EITHER 2.4 or 5 so you can run at whichever works best

[watercooled]

Of course, and if it's only 12 quid for a dual band card then why not?

[ik9000]

my thoughts exactly

[TooNice]

Thanks. There is also a more expensive upgrade for the Advanced-N + WiMAX 6150 which I believe come with an extra antenna but drops Bluetooth. I don't use Bluetooth very often but I do use it and I don't want to have to carry an external dongle (bound to forget) soI'll just go for the 6230

[Pob255]

Also the simple point that if your router/access point doesn't do n then you only connect at b/g 54Mbps anyway
On top of that, as I've recently found out, there's n and there's n draft and they will not always play nicely together.

We recently had a load of wireless n netgear access points put in and the wireless n draft laptops connect fine at the higher speeds however it can take up to 3min before they make connection (ie before a user can log on to the domain)
It's been a nightmare sorting it out, log on locally and at first nothing seems wrong, eventually tracked down the issue to them dropping packets (about 7% packet drop)
What I've had to end up doing is resetting all 40 laptops back to using b/g only.

[billythewiz]

Of course, and if it's only 12 quid for a dual band card then why not?

That's what I thought when I upgraded to 'N' from 'G' on my Dell Mini 10v. Unfortunately the drivers for the 'N' are really poor and I've never managed to get it working very well.

It's true that £12 isn't enough to be the decider, but if you upgrade to something esoteric there will be less support (on the net) if you run into troubles.

Having said that I've no idea if either of those cards count as "esoteric". They're Intel so what could possibly go wrong

[ik9000]

Also the simple point that if your router/access point doesn't do n then you only connect at b/g 54Mbps anyway
On top of that, as I've recently found out, there's n and there's n draft and they will not always play nicely together.

yeah it took ages for the n standard to be ratified and manufacturers got fed up of waiting. Most knew there-or-thereabouts what the standard would end up being, and released their pre-N stuff to try and get some momentum behind their version. Other manufacturers followed suit and once N itself was bottomed out, some pre-N was kinda no good no more, but still kinda works. Anyone who bought pre N was taking a big gamble, and it's hard to imagine why anyone would settle for buying pre-N now, even if it's cheap it'll be for a reason.

[Pob255]

Problem that current some stuff sold as N is actually N draft, not a couple of years ago but now.
I've discovered that once you get beound a basic home setup wireless starts getting hellishly complex very quickly.
Must say you're going for the right choice with a centrino card, while it was a big chunk marketing, things with the centrino brand has been some of the best and most reliable wireless systems.

A void mixing Realtek RTL8192 wireless adaptor with netgear N standard access points, they will play happly at b/g just not at n