Will upgrading to N increase my Internet speed?

[mayache]

I currently have a WRT54G router, it works well and nothing seems to be broken. My internet speed was recently upgraded to 25 Mbps (from 15), but I noticed that my measured speed was still stuck at 15. I moved the ethernet cable coming from the modem from the router to my laptop, and the measured speed went up to over 25 Mbps. It would seem the router is the issue but I know this router is spec'ed at 54 and that is what the wifi connection status says it is as well. Should I expect that if I upgrade to a wireless N router, my speed will go up to 25?

 

[eibgrad]

Wireless N will help assuming your current wireless G is not capable of handling the greater speeds of your internet connection. The speeds indicated by the OS are NOT measured, but merely an estimate based on perceived signal strength/quality. It’s no more useful/meaningful/accurate than the wifi indicator ))) on your typical smartphone. The only way to know for sure what wireless speed you have is to measure it between two local machines (one wireless, the other wired) using tools like iPerf or NetCPS.

 

[mayache]

Wireless N will help assuming your current wireless G is not capable of handling the greater speeds of your internet connection. The speeds indicated by the OS are NOT measured, but merely an estimate based on perceived signal strength/quality. It’s no more useful/meaningful/accurate than the wifi indicator ))) on your typical smartphone. The only way to know for sure what wireless speed you have is to measure it between two local machines (one wireless, the other wired) using tools like iPerf or NetCPS.

Thanks for the tips. I took your suggestion and installed iPerf on my laptop and Android phone (no second computer, but phone is spec'ed to handle wireless b/g/n). The results were a bit strange. I plugged the laptop directly into the router and set it up as the iPerf server, then connected to it from the phone iPerf client (phone connected to router via WiFi). iPerf reported about 10 Mbps. To confirm, I ran Speed Test from my phone and got again 15 MBps. I don't understand how the measured internet speed over wifi can seemingly be higher than the measured internal network speed. Any thoughts?

 

[eibgrad]

Well I suppose one possibility is your wired connection is only 10Mbps for some reason (most modern devices will be at least 100Mbps). But if that device is either only 10Mbps capable, or connected to a router that's only 10Mbps on the LAN, that would explain it. What’s the measured speed of the wired device using speedtest? Is it still limited to 10Mbps, or closer to 25Mbps?