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10 reasons your Wi-Fi speed stinks (and what you can do about it)

11.05.2012
The first , but 802.11n is likely to stick around for many years to come -- both in the business world and our homes. Unfortunately, the 300Mbps (megabits per second) that the n-standard promises rarely delivers anything even close and proves to be a massive bottleneck in the days of 50/100Mbps (or more?) broadband connections, 1080p video streaming, massive backups and so forth. On the business side of things, even menial tasks such as remote desktop or real-time collaboration suffer from a poor Wi-Fi-connection.

In some of our tests, it wasn't uncommon that a 802.11n connection with devices only a few meters apart (and with only wall in between) can fall back to a mere 2-15 Mbps. And here's where you run into problems:

· Is enough for all your basic chatting and mailing services, though it will slow down some content-heavy websites -- especially if you've got a 20+ Mbps downpipe.

· Enough for handling all websites and basic video streaming.

· This is the minimum you need to even consider HD streaming. Even though, the typical bitrate of a 720p iTunes TV show is 2-6Mbps, your router needs to compensate for dropouts, other connected clients and prebuffering.