Why do 802.11b devices slow down your WiFi network?

That said, the speed of your WiFi depends on a multitude of factors, right from the location of your WiFi to the microwave in your home. Everything affects your WiFi performance - including the devices connected to your router.

But can an old device running 802.11b on your network slow it down?

Why do 802.11b devices on the network slow down your WiFi?

As explained earlier, different protocols use various modulation techniques to transfer data. For this reason, devices using the 802.11b protocol cannot understand the data transmitted by the 802.11n protocol.

However, WiFi needs to be backwards compatible, and if an 802.11b device connects to a router that uses 802.11n, that device needs to work. Therefore, to solve this problem, the 802.11n router uses the 802.11b protocol to communicate with that device. That's what causes your WiFi to slow down due to an older device.

However, the data transfer rate does not change when the router connects to an 802.11n device, because it uses faster protocols when connecting to the device using newer protocols.

Why do 802.11b devices slow down your WiFi network? Picture 1

Another thing to understand is that your router can only transmit data to one device at a time if it doesn't support multi-user MIMO. Therefore, if a device uses the old protocol on the network, the router will take longer to connect to other devices, slowing down the network.

As a result, the network speed decreases because it takes longer to transmit data when using the 802.11b protocol.

In addition to all of the above, an 802.11b device on a different WiFi can also slow down your network. You see, WiFi is an extremely 'polite' protocol and devices on a WiFi network will listen to communication on WiFi channels. Therefore, if your neighbor's WiFi uses the same channel as your device and has an 802.11b device, that will prevent your device from starting transmission, because it thinks your WiFi is busy transmitting data to your device. other device.

How to prevent 802.11b devices from slowing down your network?

Now that you know that an old device can slow down your network, you might be wondering if it's possible to prevent this problem. While there are several solutions to your problem, the 802.11b device on your network can slow it down.

1. If all the devices on your network support 5GHz, you can use this frequency. Therefore, neighboring networks using 802.11b on the 2.4GHz band will not hinder your network performance.

2. Using dual-band WiFi can be helpful if you use both devices using the older protocol and the newer protocol. To solve your problem, you can connect older devices to the 2.4GHz network and newer devices to the 5GHz band. This will prevent older devices from interfering with newer ones that offer better speeds.

3. If you don't have 5GHz WiFi and want to prevent 802.11b devices from connecting to your network, you can disable the protocol on your router.

WiFi has changed the way users connect to the Internet. Offering a variety of protocols, WiFi has allowed users to transfer data at speeds up to 2.4Gbps.

These speeds will certainly be faster in the future as radio transmissions become more efficient and the 6GHz band enters the WiFi spectrum.

David Pac

Update 17 February 2023