being neighborly with wireless settings

I just got the Netgear WNR3500L router, and it seems to work well. One thing I noticed was that the default settings were to go 145 Mbps instead of the maximum 300. This was the "Neighbor-Friendly Mode", as the router admin console explained.

I do live in an urban area with lots of other wireless networks around me. I counted 27 that the adapter on my ThinkPad T410 picked up. A lot of those look like AT&T Uverse networks (with the "2WIRExxxx" names) and I think those all top out at 802.11g, not sure if this makes a difference. My question is: could it really badly disrupt networks around me if I'm always operating at 300 Mbps? All I really do on my network is move Office documents around so it's not like I need maximum N bandwidth all the time. If it doesn't really matter, I might as well as operate at full speed. But if it does, I don't want to be a bad neighbor!

 

Since you don't need a lot of bandwidth you should leave it as it is.
To achieve 300mbps wireless routers uses two 20MHz channels and combines them into one so instead of using one channel like you do now you would use two. It doesn't matter if you transfer files or not- if 300mbps is turned on you're using two channels just by having it set to on.

Nice to see that someone actually cares.

On an unrelated matter- use inSSIDer to survey neighboring networks and choose a channel that is free or relatively free- that will help you and those who are possibly sharing an overcrowded channel with you.

 

145 it is. Thanks, and for the inSSIDer tip (haha) too.

 

Don't forget that you also have to use WPA with AES encryption. Anything else will fall back to 150mbs.

 

To 54mbps- to get any kind of 802.11n you need WPA2+AES.

 

I beg to differ. I don't use wep so I have no idea of the connection throughput under that kind of security, but when I was using wpa+tkip, I always got 150mbps. And I get the full 300mbps as long as the aes encryption is selected, it doesn't care whether or not wpa or wpa2 is selected.

 

Simple put then your router isn't 802.11 final certified then. One of the rules is that it requires few things to get N speeds:

Those are the rules of certified N devices - If you can get N without either of those then your device just isn't conforming to the standard. Surely it works so who cares though but certain clients wont connect in odd configs.

Seems the OP is all set though so no need for me to carry this thread on