Wireless connection speed

I have a Linksys WRT54GX router, two laptops running XP that connect wirelessly to the net and desktop with XP that is hardwired to the router.

The laptops and the router support 802.11a/b/g so the highest connection/transfer speed is 54 mbps.

I performed several internet connection speed tests on one of my laptops and on the desktop. Here are the results:

Laptop:
Download - 8.86 Mbps
Upload - 0.49 Mbps

Desktop:
Download - 12.74 Mbps
Upload - 0.47 Mbps

Question:

- Will my router provide a separate 54 Mbps connection channel for each laptop or will they have to share one 54 Mbps connection?

I checked the wireless connection icon in the system tray on each laptop when they were connected last night and they were both connected at 48 Mbps. I checked them again this morning, one was connected at 24 Mbps while the other was at 18 Mbps. Last nights test leads me to believe that they would each receive a potential 54 separate channel. Is this correct?

- I'm assuming that I would not receive any internet surfing benefit from upgrading my hardware to one that supports 802.11n since my internet connection only averages 8.86 Mbps download. Is this correct? I believe that that the only benefit would be file transfers between systems on my home network. Correct?

Thanks

 

A wifi connection is a shared connection. Everyone is sharing the same bandwidth & as the no.of users increase, bandwidth falls off very fast. So you would have heard people not to have more than 15-20 connections to the same wifi as after that the speed simply drops off to near non workable.

Wifi signal would fluctuate from computer to computer unless wifi is within 10-12 feet with clear line of sight & no obstructions of the computer. Don't bother about these fluctuations.

The transfer between the systems would go up if you switch to 802.11n but still nothing beats wired networks.