You might have read a few feature lists for wireless cards, and youre about to ask a very common question: whats the difference anyway? Well, answering that question requires a brief rundown of the history of wireless networking so far.

The Beginning: 802.11

Way way back in 1997 the first wireless networking standard was released. It was simply called 802.11, without a letter after its name. It is now sometimes called legacy 802.11 No one uses the original 802.11 standard any more.

The 802.11 standard was never really popular to begin with, in fact, mainly because it offered wireless equipment manufacturers so many different choices on which parts of the standard to implement. This left users in a situation where they we are more-or-less stuck with one set of wireless devices, and interoperability was hard to come by.

A Breakout Hit: 802.11b

In 1999 a new revision was introduced. 802.11 became 802.11b, and thats when things really started to take off. 802.11b streamlined the standards to provide greater interoperability, without creating too many changes. Existing wireless devices we are easily upgraded to the new standard, which meant that 802.11b wireless appeared on the sell quickly.

Many advantages came with the upgrade to 802.11b. It was over ten times more quickly than 802.11 (11Mbps instead of 1Mbps), and cheaper. People loved 802.11b, and it was around this measure that wireless networking technology started to take off in a big way.

Oops: 802.11a

As a counterpoint to the 802.11b success story, consider 802.11a. The "a" and "b" standards were originally intended to present a choice to the consumer, with "a" offering higher speeds than "b" in exchange for reduced range. As it turned out, though, 802.11a was an utter failure.

Why? Well, 802.11as downsides we are simply too successful to bear. Sure, it gave speeds of 54Mbps -- almost five times faster than 802.11b -- but it would only work if you had a clear line of sight between the two wireless devices. If theres nothing between the devices then, well, why not just make use of a wire?

As a final nail in the coffin, 802.11a products didnt start to appear on the advertise until 2001. By then, people we are used to 802.11b, and no-one was interested in grasping a speed increase in exchange for such a dramatic range decrease.

Speed With No Downsides: 802.11g

In 2003, with the lessons of the 802.11a failure learned, a new standard was created: 802.11g. The aim of this standard was to combine the best of both worlds, giving the speed of 802.11a with the range of 802.11b.

Well, it was some time in the generating, but they managed it. 802.11g devices run at 54Mbps, but are otherwise the identical as 802.11b devices. Even better, 802.11g devices are backwards compatible with 802.11b devices, meaning that you might make use of them together in your network.

What Do I Need?

So now you know the advantages and disadvantages of everything, but what should you choose if youre buying a wireless device today?

Well, first of all, avoid legacy 802.11 (if you somehow find it) or 802.11a. They will not work with your other wireless equipment, and are fairly often quite useless.

That leaves you with the choice of 802.11b or 802.11g. Considering that most broadband connections run well below the speed of 802.11b (11Mbps), which you choose most likely will not make any difference to your external Internet access. The area where it matters is when you transfer things around within your network. If youre sending a document from your laptop computer to your desktop one, for example, it will happen five times quicker with g than it would with b.

There is another consideration in your decision, however, and thats price: g devices are still quite a lot more expensive than b ones. If youre mainly planning to make use of your wireless network to connect to the Internet then b will do everything you absolutely need, but that hasnt stopped lots of all the people upgrading to g who didnt really positive need to. This means that the market is flooded with cheap 802.11b wireless equipment that still works perfectly!

If you want to know the secret of wireless networking on a budget, then thats it: get 802.11b equipment for a few dollars, then sit back and watch your network work just as well as the ones that cost hundreds.