[Nodnarb]

I have an iBook and airport extreme. There are two PC users in my house, and they would like to connect to the airport extreme network. On the Apple website where it talks about Airport Extreme, it says that windows users running 802.11b can use it. This would slow down the whole network, so we were thinking about getting them an 802.11g notebook adapter. How much would it slow the network down? Is it worth it to buy the "g" cards instead of the "b". What is the speed difference? I know that its 11 vs. 54, but how fast is this? I have a hardwire cable in the back of the PC laptop now, how do I find out how fast thats going so I can compare?

[Applefreak01]

Windows users can use 802.11g at 54mbps just like Mac uers off the Airport Extreme base station. Your right that having both 802.11b and 802.11g devices on the network will slow down the 802.11g devices but the 802.11b will connect at the max speed of 11mbps. If you want all computers to enjoy full 802.11g 54mbps speeds then get 802.11g adapters for the Windows computers.

As for speed file transfering on 802.11b takes forever if the file is a good size, this is where 802.11g is really nice because it's faster than 802.11b. Your hard wired ethernet connection is running at either 10mbps or 100mbps (probably 100mbps). I would say that the average time to transfer a 1MB file on a 100mbps ethernet network would be 1 second, and about twice as long on a 802.11g network, and about 5 times as long on a 802.11b network. Keep in mind that the acutal speed of the network may not reach it's maximum speed at all times. Don't quote me on the speeds, they are just a rough estimate.