Wireless speed loss [Telecom]

I just had some major problems involving my Airport card and the DSL Wireless Hub/modem.

A couple of weeks ago a at&t contractor was checking cable pairs to make sure that they match the records; we all know that there are a lot of errors; anyway he moved me over to the cable pair that his records showed, the problem was the cable he moved me to had a dead short; i.e. no phone or DSL for 4 days, they got that fixed but my speed was down really bad. They found 2 bridge taps on my cable; I guess DSL does not like those, they removed them and my speed came back up a great deal, but not what is was supposed to be. The strange thing is my ethernet connected computer is working fine. I made no changes on either setup and both were working fines before the repair from hell started. I do know that there is a little loss on wireless connections, but not 1.3 on a 6 meg link. I asked on the Mac groups, but no answers. I'm sure it has something to do with my AirPort card and the Router, but as I said no changes were made and all the setting are the same.

There are other problems, like on 26 ga led cable, that AT&T plans to replace some time next year when they plan on finally offering U-Verse on my block, we are only block not to have it since our cable is over 30 years old.

Reply to
Steven Lichter
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Sympathies! -- that's what happens!

I got DSL about 9 years ago (I'm 25,000 feet from nearest CO and should never have been able to get it, but the subscription was through my university, which had clout with Pac Bell). Took about a year of repeated hassles to get all the bridge taps and stuff off the line; but once that was done, service was consistently slow but reliable for the next 8 years.

Your computer (at least if it's a Mac) is generally good at remembering all the needed setting, or else at searching automatically through options until things work.

Reply to
AES

I started out with 3Meg DSL and it worked fine, I went to 6Meg when it was offered and after a little work by the phone company; removing all my filters from the phones and running a single pair to the DSL modem it worked constant between 4.9 and 5.7. on both machines. I'm told that part of the problem is I'm on an old section of lead cable which is 26 Ga wire, the rest of the cable is at 24 ga. As far as they can tell all the bridge taps are gone, a tech worked on it for several hours and then made sure that their cable records were corrected and placed a HI-Cap take on my line; not really a Hi-Cap but as he said any work on it will raise flags before they work on it. Sometime next year all the lead cable will be gone and we will be able t o get U-Verse. I will switch my DSL to that, but not my phone; I don't like the glass since the backup is less then an hour. I'm 10,000feet from the CO, but they really don't like 6 Meg over 7000 feet. There is a NT remote, but my line with the DSL is not in that system, but my second line is and I'm thinking of moving the DSL to that number, then I'll be less the 3000 from them. A contact with their HQ is working on getting it set up on that line without moving my current one; no cost to me if it make no difference, if it does work, the old one goes away and no further cost, they have been here over 15 times in the last 2 months.

Reply to
Steven Lichter

If your AirPort is PCI-based, I have no idea. But if it's USB-based, perhaps the USB port it's on is working at USB 1.1 speeds rather than 2.0?

Just a stab in the dark, of course :-) .

Cheers, -- tlvp

Reply to
tlvp

One of the reasons residential DSL is so inexpensive -- *NO* service-level guarantees whatsoever.

Very true.

Well, unless you're running -really- ancient hardware, the wireless _should_ be running at 11mbit/sec., _minimum_. even allowing for the 'overhead' losses, this should easily swamp a 6mbit/sec upstream link.

Thus, unless 'somehow' the Wi-Fi card, or the router have gotten 'locked down' to a slower bit-rate, that _shouldn't_ be the problem.

The -really- telling item is that the ethernet-connected machine is seeing full speed, while the wireless one is not.

Possibilities boil down to:

1) 'Something' is rate-limiting the wireless link, while not affecting the ethernet connection. 2) 'Somehow', the wireless section has linked up at 'significantly less than maximum' rate, and _is_ the bottleneck. 3) 'For some reason', the packet size on the wireless link has been set to a very small number, and packet 'overhead' is a disproportionately large part of the total data traffic. 4) "Something else" is using that bandwidth -- a neighbor 'leeching' off the Wi-Fi connection maybe? 5) 'Something' is hogging the CPU on the wireless machine. 'Viruses' that attack Macs are unusual, but they do exist. The coincidental timing makes it _really_ unlikely, but it's by no means certain that it such a coincidence did _not_ occur.

If you haven't tried it already, I'd try powering everything down, including the access-point, waiting a good 30 seconds, and then powering things back up again. Then see if the problem still persists. Next, disconnect everything else, and see if the wireless box still has the problem. Third, try the wireless box on an _ethernet_ link, with the wireless turned off. things like this will go a long ways towards 'localizing' the problem.

Reply to
Robert Bonomi

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Try playing with the MTU settings on your ADSL and Wireless links (if possible). You also need to scrutinise the packet counters to see if there any any errors/dropped packets.

Reply to
David Clayton

It it is not USB, though a company makes one that is USB.

Reply to
Steven Lichter

My system is protected so no others [are] on my router. I have checked for viruses and [there are] none, at least not [any] detected. I shut everything off and rebooted [,but it did] not change. I shut the Ethernet system off and things went up a bit, I also shut the WiFi machine off and the ethernet went up to almost 6, [it] had been running at 5.6. I checked my loads and I'm running at 73% with both machines up on the net, 60% with one online. I have not gone back to Ethernet on the AirPort yet, but plan [to] do [it] today. Most of the time I only have my desktop Mac online, since I use the iBook when I travel, but I need to have it on before I leave for a job and when I return, so backups and my time charges can be done for the jobs so the company, my crew and myself get paid. When I'm on the road I stay at Best Western most of the time and my speeds for their Wi-Fi is around

4, no idea who they use. The whole reason for the testing is I'm planning to put an Airport card on the desktop so I can get rid of the last cable under my desk and that way I will also be able to use the printer on both machines via Wi-Fi.
Reply to
Steven Lichter

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