Does the internet speed (lite/high/extreme speed) of a modem effect how quick a wireless connection is?

Question

For example, if I have Shaw lite speed internet (256kbps download) and I connect my laptop to the internet using the wireless router, would the internet speed I experience on the laptop be any different if I had Shaw high speed (5mbps) or Xtreme speed (10mbps)?
I know there would be differences for the computer connected to the modem/router directly by cable, but would there be any difference in the wireless connections?

Thanks!

Answer 1

NO
Unless your internet speed is FASTER than the wireless (10Mb ish for B class, 54Mb for G class) you should seen no difference in wireless speed as the wireless is NOT the slow point

If you have a 50Mb link however the wireless will slow it down.

on the other hand your internet connection has NOTHING at all to do with the internal speeds on the wireless network

Answer 2

Yes and no.

You are probably already aware that the speed of your Internet connection is the bottleneck. The slowest component is the true speed.
For example:
Internet Speed: 1.5 Mbs
Wireless: 26 Mbs throughput (54Mbs 802.11g example)
Wired: 1000 Mbs or 100 Mbs
Website A (such as Yahoo): 200 Mbs (just an example, not a true statistic)
Website B (such as some site in Tanzania): 56Kbs

The wireless can shove the information very quickly to your computer, but until it gets the information to pass along, it is idle.

Of course, the web pages you surf have to also give information at the speed of your internet. Many of them will throttle users to ensure the Internet site has enough bandwidth to handle everyone accessing the site. So, some pages will limit you to 1Mbs. In that case, it is the slowest part of the equation.

In short, your speed will be as fast as the slowest link.

And yeah, I am sure people are happy to argue that an 802.11n is going to be faster than an 802.11g, but I don't think the average user would ever know this (assuming the link is not too far).

Answer 3

Yes it does. Even the slowest wireless is about 5MB/sec with a large B for Bytes or an 8bit word. Typically your modem speeds are 1.5-5 Mb small b meaning bits. Generally slower than your slowest wireless connections. This means that the faster your modem speed the faster your screens will come and the faster downloads you'll get. It does help to have a fast machine that will process graphics reasonably well. But even if you have a gigabyte connection on a 56k connection it won't make your 56k go faster.

Answer 4

I can speak from experience on that one. I have been using
computers that were about 4 years old, since I get them from
my SIL when he upgrades. And when I've had the wireless
connections they were still a little slow in processing data
and retrieving emails. But nothing like they were with a dial
up modem. Sometimes waiting for a page would take a full
minute or two. So yes, it is slow, but not that slllllooooowwwww!

Answer 5

Generally the wireless connection is less than the connection speed of the router or any computer plugged directly into the wireless hug.

This has to do with signal strength which varies and changes despite sitting in one place. Signal strength is seldom excellent all the time.

Answer 6

The speed of the internet access, is independant from the speed of your Wireless connection. As long as the wireless connection is faster than the internet, you should not see any difference in the speed of the connection going from the internet to your workstation through your router.

Answer 7

Yes it will effect the speed. I have a router. I used to use basic dial up. Now I have cable, the cable allows more transfer rate. The router can only deliver as fast as it can receive.

Answer 8

Yes, your modem, and any other hardware can bottleneck your connection speed, especially slower modems.

Answer 9

Of course it does. It's dependent on how fast the gnomes pedal.