Wi-fi Issue

Blues

Blues

hovering overhead
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Not being particularly computer savvy or literate I figured I'd ask some of you mavens your thoughts.

My ISP is putting out about 5 megs speed and when I connect my laptop by wire to the router I am getting most of it.

However, when hooked up via my wireless connection I am only getting about half the speed.

I realize that WPA encryption will reduce speed a bit but is there any setting on the laptop I can change to get most of the speed back?

I had the router and access point checked on a friend's computer and he got 4.6 megs of speed so I know it's not the router or access point at fault.

I am getting a strong signal (54 mbps) and the only other wireless that I pick up faintly (on occasion) is on a different channel than mine.

I unplugged my wireless phone/base station and wireless speakers without any increase in speed. I don't know of any other device or appliance that is an obvious offender.

I also shut down the blue tooth manager on the laptop to see if that is the problem but that provided no relief either.

Also tried the speed with and without the firewall running and still no increase.

I have an Intel 4965AGN wireless adapter and it appears to have the latest driver it can use (as it would not accept the updated version I tried yesterday from the Intel website). I run XP (Pro) SP3

Could it be a faulty card?

Any thoughts or help are greatly appreciated. It's not that 2.5 megs is awful but I'd rather get 4.6 megs if I can.

Thanks! :cool::thumbup:
 
Is your signal being sent through a floor or series of walls? Its probably either that or a faulty, or sub-par to begin with, wireless nic. Seems like you've likely isolated electronic interference anyway. Does changing the channel change the speed you're getting?
 
roughedges said:
Is your signal being sent through a floor or series of walls? Its probably either that or a faulty, or sub-par to begin with, wireless nic. Seems like you've likely isolated electronic interference anyway. Does changing the channel change the speed you're getting?
Click to expand...

Same level, one room over. Tested it in the same room as access point as well as in the room I normally use with no difference in speed.

Changing channels provided no increase in speed.

Could you explain your term in "wireless nic"? Just want to make sure I'm on the same page.
 
Blues said:
Could you explain your term in "wireless nic"? Just want to make sure I'm on the same page.
Click to expand...

A "nic" is your network interface card. Either built in on the mobo or external via pcmcia or, more likely these days, usb. I guess its actually old fashioned usage; they're just called network adapters these days. Some are definitely better than others though.

If you have a desktop with wireless access, I would also test that. Sometimes the cramped environment inside a notebook case is enough in itself to cause some electrical interference. Also, the 4965 card seems to be usable with many different protocols. You should check to make sure that both the adapter and router are configured to use the same protocol, whether B G or N. It's possible that the 4965agn is defaulting to 802.11 b or g, thereby forcing your connection to a lower speed.
 
Thanks. As far as I can tell both the adapter and access point are on "G".

If no other solution comes up I'll see if I can have the guy that built the laptop for me swap out the adapter.
 
When you say that you checked it with a friends computer, were both the computers in exactly the same location when you ran the test?

Is it a consistently low speed or does it vary?

Do you have WPA security configured on your access point (ie to make sure that no one else is logging on and stealing your bandwidth!)
 
bladefixation2 said:
When you say that you checked it with a friends computer, were both the computers in exactly the same location when you ran the test?

Is it a consistently low speed or does it vary?

Do you have WPA security configured on your access point (ie to make sure that no one else is logging on and stealing your bandwidth!)
Click to expand...

My laptop was not in the same location as the other laptop. I brought my router and access point to his location to test on his computer. He got about the same speed I got when mine is plugged in rather than wireless.

The speed stays consistently around 2.4 megs wireless and 4.6 megs via wire.

I do have security configured on my access point and I always read a full 54 mbps signal strength on my laptop.
 
Okay, here's an update and my next question.

The speed test I was using previously, which was giving results of approx. 2.5 mbps is a Java based application hosted by my ISP.

I just this evening used some other speed tests I found on the net am showing consistently 4.1 megs or better.

So, my question is does it seem reasonable to assume that the apparent issue with my speed on the original tests was based upon some issue with my laptop working with and processing Java? I hope so as that is more easily dealt with.

Thanks again for further educating me on this.
 
I don't think Java would cause any loss of connection speed. What I have noticed is that I've received different results from different speed test websites. The one I have found the most reliable is www.speedtest.net. Not only do they give you a suggested server to ping, you can test your speed to servers globally.
 
Well, interestingly enough, it was the speedtest site that gave me the higher readings consistently.

I updated Java (I wasn't too far off the latest version) but it made no difference when I went back to my ISP's speed test...roughly 2.4 megs.

Speedtest is showing consistently over 4 megs. So, I'm chalking it up to some kind of Java issue since everything else appears to be working as it should be.
 
My ISP (Cox Business Services) always read slower than Speedtest or Speakeasy. I'm not sure why this is, but I've never experienced the spread of differences you have.
 
Does your wireless connection take twice as long to open a webpage as your wired connection? Bear in mind, even if it does, it doesn't mean anything is wrong. I would expect a 10/100 wired connection to be quite a bit faster than a 54G wireless connection. Not to mention that a lot of new motherboards come with 10/100/100 network adapters built in, which are likely capable of more speed than your wireless router can come close to putting out.
If you open a command line window (start - run and type in CMD and then click okay) you can run some tests that wil tell you a little more about your connection speed.
In the black window that opens up, type
ping - l 1024 -n 100 www.yahoo.com
and press enter.
Here's what the command means. Ping is a command that sends a "hello" message to a remote computer. The remote computer sends an ackknowledgement back. By default, ping send 4 packets of "hello" info to the remote computer, each one consisting of 32 bytes of data. The -l 1024 part of the command says to send packets consisting of a (l)ength of 1024 bytes of data instead of 32 bytes of data. The reason for that is because it's easy to send and receive tiny pieces of data whereas your network card might choke on larger pieces of data. The -n 100 part of the command says to send 100 packets of "hello" instead of just 4. Sometimes if you send just 4 you will get answers to all of them, but if you send 100 you may only get answers to 80 of them. That would indicate packet loss. After all 100 packets are sent and acknowledged, the command line will tell you the average speed and if any percentage of packets were lost. No packets should be lost. You average round trip time should not be much over 50 ms. Like I said, though, your wired connection might just be inherently capable of processing data a lot faster than your wireless 54G card. But these tests will bypass the possibility of it being a problem with java, as they are simply parts of the networking built into your computer.
 
jerrinfla said:
Does your wireless connection take twice as long to open a webpage as your wired connection? Bear in mind, even if it does, it doesn't mean anything is wrong. I would expect a 10/100 wired connection to be quite a bit faster than a 54G wireless connection. Not to mention that a lot of new motherboards come with 10/100/100 network adapters built in, which are likely capable of more speed than your wireless router can come close to putting out.
If you open a command line window (start - run and type in CMD and then click okay) you can run some tests that wil tell you a little more about your connection speed.
In the black window that opens up, type
ping - l 1024 -n 100 www.yahoo.com
and press enter.
Click to expand...

Jerrinfla, when I type or paste in your command line I get the reply "bad command" or something similar. Could you type it out as I should paste it in?
And thanks for your info and ideas.
 
Sorry, it looks like I somehow put a space in between the first dash and the letter L
It should be this:


ping -l 1024 -n 100 www.yahoo.com



I double checked it this time by copying and pasting it to make sure there's no typo in there.
So click on Start, then Run, and type in cmd
Then click okay - you'll get your black command line window.
Type or paste the line in the black command line window that opens up for you.
To paste it in the command line box, you have to left click on the icon in the upper left corner of the command line window, then highlight Edit and then click on Paste in the popout window. You can't use the ctrl - v keys to paste in a command line window like you can in a word document or a notepad file..
Hit the enter key, and you should see it send a packet of data out one line at a time for 100 lines. You only need to look at the bottom after it's done, it'll given a summary of the average time and any packet loss statistics.
 
Just to clarify, after the 100 there is a space and then a web address. I typed Yahoo's web address because I can't remember their website ever being down and it doesn't ignore ping requests. I forgot the way that web sites appear in a message here when you type them in, and it might make it a pain in the neck for you to copy.
If you type the command line in, don't use capital letters, use all lower case letters.
PING -L 1024 -N 100 followed by a space and Yahoo's web address will not work. The L and the N have to be lower case letters.
 
jerr,

I copied and pasted your info from post #17. Out of 100 packets, one was lost, 99 rec'd.

Avg time was 71 ms. My speedtest right afterward was 4.2 mbps

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
 
Run it a few times and make a note of any more packet loss & compare the results to what you get from your desktop.
Also, even though losing one packet seems rather trivial, you shouldn't be losing any at all. Hopefully you won't see any more in subsequent tests.
You can try pinging your router ip address with that command several times and see if you are losing packets between the router and the wireless adapter. If you are, it's likely a problem with the network adapter or the wireless part of your router.
 
jerrinfla said:
Run it a few times and make a note of any more packet loss & compare the results to what you get from your desktop.
Also, even though losing one packet seems rather trivial, you shouldn't be losing any at all. Hopefully you won't see any more in subsequent tests.
You can try pinging your router ip address with that command several times and see if you are losing packets between the router and the wireless adapter. If you are, it's likely a problem with the network adapter or the wireless part of your router.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help. :cool::thumbup:
 
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