Best solution for lowest 802.11 latencies

I've been using a Linksys wrt54g for YEARS (though I upgraded it with DD-WRT a few years ago so it's not the same as it once was) because the thing just keeps on working and my ISP is only 30mb/s so I don't need anything faster...

With that brief intro out of the way I have three questions:

1. Am I correct in assuming that, since B and G share the same spectrum, going down to B-only mode won't help spectrum congestion?
2. Would I generally find that B/G has lower or higher latencies than N?
3. Would a newer router with more RAM or better CPU provide better performance (I find I have to reset my router every few days or performance slows)

At the end of the day my concern is that I work from home and my VPN performance is absolutely terrible unless I'm sitting on my first floor. Before I go spend money on setting up relays--which seems like the most obvious fix to a distance-from-router problem--I wanted to check with you whether there might be other culprits. Even if I go buy new hardware I plan to skip using N since I don't need the extra bandwidth and 2.4GHz (802.11 B/G) penetrates walls better than the higher frequencies used by N.

Thanks
Zach

IMO, your router is on the fritz. You shouldn't be rebooting it every day. The WRT54G has always been a solid unit, but it's something like a decade old, and probably needs to be refreshed. I can't speak to latency on b/g/n, but old standards get phased out for a reason. I certainly would not attempt running on b (11mbs theoretical max), at the very least use G. Also, be certain that all devices on the network are at least G capable.

Buy a decent N capable router with gigabit ports and call it a day. Even so, though, you might still have trouble with the router being on a different floor than you. Since you live in a multi-level house, I'd say find a way to run at least one run of Cat5e down to your router so you can either hardwire in on the second floor, or can place another access point up there. Also, just to clarify for you, 802.11n is not 5ghz only, it can operate at both 2.4ghz and 5ghz. And even if your ISP only gives you 30mbps, that doesn't mean you can't utilize the 300mbps capabilities of N on your own network (of course, assuming all devices are N capable).

What's the modern equivalent of the WRT54G? Today's Belkins and Negears are pieces of crap...I know Linksys just came out with something that's supposed to be reminiscent of the WRT54G series--it's even blue and stackable like the old one--but it looks like a pure marketing play to me and the price is astronomical.

Thanks
Zach

I have a Netgear WNDR3400 v2, been using it for a few years now without issue. It just recently got support for DD-WRT so it's running that now. I'll agree that I haven't had good luck with Belkin, but I've had no issues with any Cisco/Linksys, DLink, or Netgear networking equipment over the last decade or so.

The WRT1900ac was advertised to be the spiritual successor to the WRT54g. It was also supposed to have been released with OpenWRT support (which has yet to happen due to Linksys holding out). It's a monster of a router in it's own right (and has a price tag to match). Once it has DD-WRT or OpenWRT support it might be a good system, until then it's a lot of under utilized hardware.

zachj said:

What's the modern equivalent of the WRT54G? Today's Belkins and Negears are pieces of crap...I know Linksys just came out with something that's supposed to be reminiscent of the WRT54G series

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The last time I had a problem with any Netgear hardware was way back when 802.11g was brand new. Exactly which hardware are you referring to as crap? A WNDR3700 is about $80. Everything that's left in stock anyware should be a v4 which has some damn good hardware specs, and OpenWRT runs great on it.

Toraidhe said:

(which has yet to happen due to Linksys holding out)

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It's not Linksys. It's Belkin. Cisco just sold the name.