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

[oxwivi]

Forget 802.11n, that's not important, your 802.11n devices will never max out to 300Mbps anyway; no, the most damning is fricking Fast Ethernet instead of Gigabit interfaces in 20-fucking-21. How do you justify FE when it's basically been 3 decades since GbE is a thing? Absolutely incomprehensible.

[Dedale]

Same remark than with the wifi: I have gigabit Ethernet on my motherboard but my Belgian internet connection is 100 Mbps. Rather 85 Mbps in reality. And according to some comments i am among the fortunate here. So the 100 mbps Ethernet of the ISP issued box is fast enough anyway.

Besides, for my nomadic uses i still have a 32 bit EEEPC with a light debian on it. With openbox. It still suits my needs and weighs only 900 grams. No youtube on that or any heavy advert laden internet page with that of course.

[Guest]

It seems to me that some people think that the WIFI-4 is outdated and therefore useless. WIFI-4 is older (2008), we now have WIFI-5 and WIFI-6, but is it thus outdated?
Where are the countries that have broadband IP traffic with speeds of 0.4-2Gb/s available for most consumers?
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.

So, please, accept the world as it is today and don't be so condescending.

It's not just about pure bandwidth, connection strength and latency to the router also plays a role. Also, that 300 Mbps is assuming ideal situation which is not the case in the real world. In reality it's far lower.

Only relevant devices that use 802.11n are smartwatches....

[cb88]

801.11n is fine for most homes at this time.

No... every N device still in use wastes spectral bandwidth, this is worse in dense areas, if you live on an acre by yourself no big deal but if you are a city dweller then it does become a big deal.

[NateHubbard]

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.

What you're describing is common with obsolete hardware. Running old versions of Windows is because Microsoft doesn't support obsolete hardware either. Apple is even worse about that.
They make newer cheap hardware too. I'd recommend that instead.

[novideo]

Forget 802.11n, that's not important, your 802.11n devices will never max out to 300Mbps anyway; no, the most damning is fricking Fast Ethernet instead of Gigabit interfaces in 20-fucking-21. How do you justify FE when it's basically been 3 decades since GbE is a thing? Absolutely incomprehensible.

RYF has gigabit Ethernet. https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/ethernet-adapters

[hotaru]

No... every N device still in use wastes spectral bandwidth, this is worse in dense areas, if you live on an acre by yourself no big deal but if you are a city dweller then it does become a big deal.

at least the router the FSF is recommending only runs on 2.4GHz (where 802.11ac doesn't exist), and isn't shitting up the 5 GHz band. unfortunately, they are recommending dual-band 802.11n adapters on the client side.

[fransdb]

What you're describing is common with obsolete hardware. Running old versions of Windows is because Microsoft doesn't support obsolete hardware either. Apple is even worse about that.
They make newer cheap hardware too. I'd recommend that instead.

You ever wonder why they use these "obsolete" systems?
Many if not the majority of world citizens are already "happy" when they survive another day, with or without some food in their belly. Even in they so called "rich" countries, not all people are able to afford daily (good) food.

But I see that the words outdated and obsolete are still being used as synonyms. Obsolete is something which has effectively be replaced by something else. Outdated is something older for which newer alternatives exists. In the current meaning (here) it means that older people are outdated if they have kids to carry on their bloodline and therefor are being obsolete. Before someone reacts, think about that....

[NateHubbard]

You ever wonder why they use these "obsolete" systems?

No, I really don't wonder, but you're not going to hold back the entire industry because somebody, somewhere is poor.

[dave_boo]

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.

I was thinking the same thing then remembered that I still have Raspberry Pi machines running...