[NBLUG/talk] 802.11 USB adapters

[Robert Brown]

On Sun, 2008-06-01 at 15:09 -0700, Andrew wrote:
> 
> That makes me wonder. What happens when you plug an 802.11g (54
> Mbps) adapter into a USB 1.1 (12 Mbps) port? Does it throttle
> back to 802.11b speeds?

My guess is not exactly... Using a 54 Mbps adapter into a 1.1 port, it
seems like you might not be achieving the full speed capable of the card
when doing something like transferring a large file on a local LAN.
Although when using the card to cruise the net, the average high speed
home cable connection is only like 5 Mbps or as little as 1.544 Mbps for
a T1 line, for which the usb 1.1 port is plenty fast enough. Another
factor is that for each "bar" you lose on your wireless connection, the
speed is halved. So if your missing two bars your already down within
the 1.1 port speeds about.