It's 2021 & The FSF Is Still Endorsing 802.11n WiFi Hardware

[uxmkt]

Looking globally, having a WIFI-4 router (max 600 Mb/s) is for most people enough since their local speed connections are still rated in single or double digit Mb/s and if they are lucky 200 Mb/s. Okay, some have already 1 Gb/s connections with fiber optics.

It is the same of having - say - an Bugatti Veron 415 Km/h (257.9 mph) and having roads where the speed limit is 120 Km/h (74.6 mph). You pay a lot but can't use it because of the law, or infrastructure or number of concurrent users.

I get what you are saying, but the "luxury problems" of Gigabit present differently than getting stuck in slow traffic.
One can download a larger youtube video in a short(er) time, but now you've got so much content to watch that a fraction of the transfer speed would have been just as ok. ;-)

[fransdb]

Is what I settled on for as a compromise between fast and cheap and open source support.... and it has AC... they should be supporting an an AP with the same chipset honestly. And encouraging older standards is not helpful.

There is a difference between "encouragement" and defending the continuous use of "older standards". I did not encouraged the use of 802.11n, rather defend the ongoing use of it for financial, and practical reasons.

[fransdb]

32 bit is old and obsolete. I haven't owned a machine that wasn't 64 bit for 15 years now, and I'm not exactly rich.

That is you, how about many other people in other parts of the world?
I still have 32-bit machines, but can't use them anymore because of memory constrains. But if they could handle 4GB of memory, they would still be useful as a small server/NAS with Linux. Most 32-bit machines, however, run older or even obsolete versions of MS Windows. Why? They are dirt cheap, most programs still execute and there is vastly more MS Windows knowledge available worldwide then about Linux with ALL it's different flavors.

[fransdb]

In most cases 802.11n routers do not perform at the theoretical maximum rate, therefore the actual typical speed is 50Mbps or so (and may vary wildly).

One case in where high speed comes at benefit is for local video streaming (I have plenty of videos that easily exceed 100Mbps bitrate).

About the practical speed limit, yes I do agree to some degree. If you talk about the 11g versions, it is true, but 11n versions can and do offer higher speeds. However, this is mostly only useful for LAN's because of previous speed constrains on the WAN side.

[fransdb]

there are uses for low-tech routers. but not for $55 a piece

Can you elaborate on that?

[fransdb]

And LAN connections?

802.11N is fine a for a couple active devices on one router. Put more than that and performance drops more than linearly. And its not the best on a complex environment or with interference.

Yes, for LAN's a higher speed can be practical. However, I have 11n in my home and have xfer speeds of up to 300 Mb/s which is fast enough for even the most demanding data transfers.
At any time there are about 8 devices concurrently connected of which six have a bearing on the available bandwidth. They still have uninterrupted video, data transfers. However, the only limiting factor is the maximum of 110 Mb/s WAN connection (VDSL) I have.

As about interference, the internal WiFi router and repeaters have been configured to use auto configuration regarding the channels to use. And looking at the screen and seeing around 15 different WiFi signals around the house, that is/was the only option to guarantee some useful throughput (60-85 Mb/s) on the WAN side.

[idash]

Good to see some confirming messages this time. It seems to me that some people think that older is outdated or even obsolete. I remember the 32-bit discussions where it was also assumed that most people have switched over to 64-bit systems, rendering 32-bit system obsolete. It is a mind set I notice emanating from some countries who are considered being wealthy.
If you have money, you can buy the latest and fasted hardware, to move forward and make older hardware obsolete. What that mind set also indicates is that those who think like that, know (very) little of the rest of the world or just don't care (enough) about anything outside there own bubble.
Maybe, just maybe, about 1-1.5 billion people can have the latest/fastest hardware. That does not mean that they really need it, but are driven by status, ego, or plain commerce. The rest of the world would like to do the same - driven by the same desires -, but they are already happy when they have a 32-bit machine with an 32-bit Windows XP/8. Not safe, but hé they have at least some "modern" hardware to show.

Modernization and progress in technology are okay, but let's not forget the majority of people on this small planet. People who are left out, tend to be less cooperative and some being pushed far enough, getting violent towards others. Competing with others only to establish who has the biggest, hardest, meanest, best or the most is a race towards the abyss for human kind.

Very true.

I always get confused by those Wi-Fi names, so I had no idea what's the big deal with the "802.11n". Then reading on, the article mentions "300 Mbps..."
Guess what? I'm on 8 Mbps. Ethernet, no less, because that's how things are where I live.
There are faster options of course, but they're just not feasible for me, and 8 Mbps is good enough for what I do. Even playing YouTube videos at 1080p works just fine. Heck, even if I wanna watch a video at 4K, I would simply download it and watch it locally.

It shouldn't really matter if the technology is 10 or 20 years old, as long as it's still relevant and can still get things done reasonably.
Now of course "reasonably" is going to be different depending on who you ask, but I believe that "up to 300 Mbps" is plenty for most people.

[TemplarGR]

801.11n is fine for most homes at this time.

[skeevy420]

Spoiler: That was Nintendo Switch by the way.

In addition to that, the DS, 3DS, and Game Boy Advance (and all the many iterations of all three of those) all used ARM of some kind.

[kpedersen]

depicts a plumber on his mission to rescue a princess (and the ending is a huge disappointment designed to brainwash the kids into eliminating the idea of marriage and lifelong relationships), and this other content in where you collect transformed animals and put them at stake.

Have you ever considered a career in marketing computer games?