I've got an Atheros chipset PCMCIA wifi card in my Pentium II laptop (antiX 13.2 testing, kept updated weekly), which I've been using pretty happily for several months with a hotspot running on my second desktop machine (connecting a USB wifi dongle to the wired network with a software bridge); I recently upgraded to a genuine N router due to my old wired router failing -- it was resetting every minute or so. The wifi signal from the new (Chinese made) Phicomm router is significantly stronger; I'm now getting -55 dB where I used to see -69 to -75 reported on the laptop, but I still don't see reported connection at 150 Mb/s from the laptop. Is there a setting I need to tweak in antiX to get full connection speed, or is it a setting in the router (other wifi devices in the house aren't as accessible to me as the laptop -- two Playstation PSP-Go devices, and a roomer's laptop -- so I'm not sure if it's the router or the laptop at"fault") -- or should I look elsewhere for the trouble?

Not critical, since the connection speed available is still above my Internet connection of 30 Mb/s, but I'm concerned it indicates something else isn't working right...

If anything in the house is running wireless g. The router defaults to that.
Hence the 54MB speed. Also your ISP provider needs to supply your needed speeds.

Mine comes in through phone line so mine is limited vs having a fiber optic hookup.
The boondocks are cave man isp hookups.

I don't think AntiX has anything to do with your pcmcia n speeds. I run a
SMCWCB-N2 EZ 2.4GHz 300Mbps Wireless N Pro Cardbus WiFi Adapter
myself and it runs OK on free wifi hotspots.

@roky,

actually on the wireless speeds, that used to be true with"b" speeds, but"n" is supposed to coexist with"g". that's not saying individual hardware might have issues.

stupid question : is the pcmcia device also an"n" device, or is it g/b?

Mines a N. I guess SO is also. Mine works in N just fine.

Depends on your Internet

If you have DSL or ADSL, your Internet is limited to 10-20 Mbps and gets slower the farther you are from the phone company. If you live in rural America, your only choice is DSL/ADSL, and if you are 50 miles from your ISP you have speeds generally around 3 Mbps. So having wireless G (54 Mbps) or N (100 Mbps) really doesn't make any difference. You could use a B (1 0Mbps) wireless and wouldn't see any difference. In Houston I have 100 Mbps cable service so see about 88 Mbps wired to the router, 66 Mbps wireless N and about 22 Mbps wireless G, so having N means 66 vs 22. 3Mbps may just be fine for you if you have 2-3 users sending email and updating Facebook. If you are going to watch movies on Netflix, play games/Xbox over the Internet or back up your HDD to the cloud, you probably can't do it on DSL. Having 10 people on your network at Xmas time will probably not allow you to read/update FB or watch YouTube.

The PCMCIA card is marked as a b/g/n, and the roomer says his (Windows 7) computer is getting 150 Mb/s connection. Yes, I'm well aware that my actual throughput won't exceed the speed of my Internet connection (30 Mb/s, which tests at around 29 Mb/s on speed test web sites), but the connection should detect at the level my hardware supports, unless something in software is limiting that level; that is, my N hardware should give me a 150 Mb/s detected connection, even if the available data is only 30 Mb/s. I'm pretty sure I've seen only 54 Mb/s connection when connected at the local Starbuck's, even though I'm pretty sure they're running an N router. Seems to me there was something in the etc/networks file that specified wifi speed setting (was just looking at that the other day, while dismantling the software bridge on the Athlon XP system); let me check that.

Where this could affect performance is if I want/need to print something from the laptop through the network (printers are connected to my primary desktop machine).

Edit: just rechecked, the connection speed setting I recall was in hostapd.conf, which I don't have on the laptop (it's needed only for running a wifi host, as was the case when I was bridging on the Athlon XP system).