Lower Speeds On Wireless compared to Wired

I have a Dlink DI525 4 port wireless router. My internet service is cable. When connected wirelessly on my laptop (dell insprion) I get 3612 kpbs down and around 600 k up. When connected to the modem directly, I get 5157 kbps down and about the same upload. I have a Intel wireless pc card in the laptop. A,B and G signal. The dlink is a wireless G. Is there any advantage of upgrading my wireless router to get the faster downloads that I get connected directly to the cable modem? The 524 is probably at least two years old.

Reply to
Greg
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The short and simple answer is NO, you have to remember that your cable modem is limited as well. If you update all your wireless network, you will still be limited by what your cable company can pull out of your cable modem. which is probable what your seeing as 3 mpbs, and 512 kps up. Of course this is dependent on the time of day, and what site your downloading from. If eveyone on your neighborhood has cable then it could be even slower.

If your streaming video over your personal network, say from one computer to the other, without using your cable modem then it might be worth it. Or if you want WPA2 or more security then it might be worth the upgrade, but you have to decide on what conditions it will be worth it to you.

Rthoreau

Reply to
rthoreau

"Greg" hath wroth:

I'll guess you mean a DI-524 router. The DI-524 is 802.11g, as is your Intel whatever "PC card". They should connect up to 54Mbits/sec which will deliver up to 25Mbits/sec TCP file transfer speed. Something else is wrong.

3.5Mbits/sec is about what one would expect from an 802.11b 11Mbits/sec connection. That's too slow for your 6Mbit/sec cable service. I'm not sure why it's this slow, but my guess is that your eyeglass perscription is at fault. You might try inspecting the router to see if it's a DI-514 which is 802.11b only. If this is the case, I would certainly upgrade to an 802.11g wireless router.
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On Tue, 08 Aug 2006 09:06:40 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Otherwise, if you have two computers, test your computer-to-computer speed over wireless as described in the How To wiki below, and post the results here so we have more to go on.

Reply to
John Navas

As Jeff said, 802.11g is more than sufficient to carry your internet connection assuming there is no/little interference going on.

Assuming you are using Windows, what you may want to give a shot at is tweaking the TCP settings for the wireless card.

Check out "TCP Optimizer";

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Its fairly simple to use but read the FAQs and make a backup of your initial settings (its in the menu) before applying changes.

"TCP Optimizer" is the first thing I use on Windows computer after installing wireless drivers and it often makes a huge difference.

Run some speed tests;

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before and after....

Reply to
Eric

You guess I mean DI-524 router? What gave it away? Possibly the fact that I stated it was a DI524 router at the beginning of my paragraph? The fact that it delivers at 54Mbps has nothing to do with it. You or I will never download off the internet at 54Mbps. The fastest you can get is about 30Mbps with a T3. If I were copying or moving a file on a lan then yes, I could max out at 54Mbps. And what an eye glass prescription has to do with it I have no idea.

Reply to
Greg

On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 21:57:04 -0500, "Greg" wrote in :

You actually called it "DI525" -- see your own quote below -- and then "524" at the end of the paragraph. You own Jeff an apology.

Reply to
John Navas

damn it!!!

Sorry Jeff!! I'm a dumbass. But I still dont know why my eye glass perscription is at fauilt.

Reply to
Greg

On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 22:06:16 -0500, "Greg" wrote in :

Your keyboard seems to need attention as well. :)

Reply to
John Navas

Nah. Laptop. I can't type to save my life on this thing.

Seriously though. Is it just simply interference that is causing me to loose about 1 Mgbps? I just did a bandwidth speed test on speakeasy and got 3.6 Mbps down. If I connect to the router directly instead of connecting via wireless, I will get upwards of 4.3 Mbps. Not that it really matters. It is fast enough for me. I am just wondering why more than anything.

Reply to
Greg

Just for testing purposes, try temporarily disabling all security on the DI-524, and rerunning your speed tests. And to repeat my earlier suggestion: Otherwise, if you have two computers, test your computer-to-computer speed over wireless as described in the How To wiki below, and post the results here so we have more to go on.

On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 23:09:18 -0500, "Greg" wrote in :

Reply to
John Navas

So much for my attempt at humor. If you have read any of my responses to question in alt.internet.wireless, you'll probably have run into my chronic complaint that people just can't seem to adequately describe that hardware and software they are using. It's essential to know the wireless router model number. Better yet, the hardware revision level, firmware version, and what computah and wireless device is being used to connect to the router.

As for your eyeglass prescription, you initially called it a DI525 which suggests either fuzzy vision or fuzzy thinking. In a fit of temporary diplomacy, I guessed the former instead of the latter. Also, as I'm getting older, it's becoming quite difficult to read serial number labels, fine print, and the handwriting on the wall.

Assuming you do have a DI-524, you should be able to get better performance than 3.6Mbits/sec. It should be equal (but no more) than your 5.1Mbits/sec speed when directly connected. Therefore, something is wrong. The laptop with the unspecified model Intel a/b/g card is most certainly 802.11g and should connect at 54Mbits/sec. However, I don't many clues as to what's happening (i.e. benchmarks and numbers) so I can only speculate on the cause. Possible problems are:

  1. Ancient driver on the Intel a/b/g. I strongly recommend using Intel Proset 10.5.0.0 instead of Windoze Wireless Zero Config. |
    formatting link
    I know it's a 130Mbyte download. Check the diagnostics and logging output for problems.
  2. Slow connection. What wireless connection speed are you getting? A file transfer speed of 3.6Mbits/sec is about what I would expect from an 11Mbit/sec connection. No clue why it should be going that slow, but it's possible.
  3. Are you connected to your own wireless access point or the neighbors 802.11b access point? That might explain the sluggish performance.
  4. Any TCP/IP errors? Run: Start -> Run -> cmd netstat -sn | more Look for a large percentage of errors?
  5. Any interference? Run: Start -> Run -> cmd ping -t 192.168.0.1 The typical latency should be a few milliseconds and should be constant. If it varies all over the place and perhaps even times out, you've got interference. Try a different channel.
  6. Do you have the latest firmware on your DI-524? I had a customer buy a DI-524 and PCMCIA card bundle at Costo. It had lots of weird problems including general lack of speed. It also wouldn't maintain a wireless connection. I had the customer exchange it for another, which worked just fine (after I updated the firmware). If it's a new router, you might have a lemon.

There's probably some more things that could go wrong, but it's late and I'm lazy. Good luck.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

formatting link
Yeah, I know it's a 130Mbyte download. Check the diagnostics and

Reply to
Greg

On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 05:48:00 GMT, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

In my experience this is a more common problem than is usually thought

-- I've several times seen considerable differences in performance and/or stability between different samples of the same wireless products running the same firmware/driver, even from major manfs. I've now taken to exchanging products near the beginning of troubleshooting instead of near the end, and it's saved me considerable time and my clients considerable hassle and expense.

Reply to
John Navas

I just checked my cable connection, which I bought at 3Mbps, but is now on the mchsi website at 5mbps (They have 10Mbps for an extra $10... hmmm).

Your speeds are lower than what I see with 802.11b. Something is wrong at your house.

I like iperf to test my connection, but that requires having a unix account on the internet that I can use for the other end. Or, as john suggests, along with a simple stopwatch-timed copy, iperf could run between a wired and wireless PC on your LAN.

Wired 100BaseT laptop: ncftp download: 7.66 MB 574 KBytes/s iperf download: 5.68 MB 4.61 Mbits/sec iperf upload: 552 KB 238 Kbits/sec

54g 64 bit WEP (54Mbps-Excellent) on the same laptop: ncftp download: 7.66 MB 575 KBytes/s iperf download: 5.59 MB 4.56 Mbits/sec iperf upload: 544 KB 240 Kbits/sec 11b 64 bit WEP (11Mbps-Excellent) on the same laptop: ncftp download: 7.66 MB 532.97 kB/s iperf download: 5.62 MB 4.58 Mbits/sec iperf upload: 544 KB 241 Kbits/sec

Realtek RTL 8139 Wired NIC Netgear WG511 802.11g WiFi DLink DWL-122 802.11b USB-WiFi Netgear WGR614v4 Wifi Router Motorola SB5100 Cable Modem.

With WinXP-SP2, if I hover the cursor over the WiFi icon in the system tray, I see "Speed: 54.0 Mbps". Do you get a speed indication? I also see the brand and SSID name of my router (with Jeff's idea that you might be inadvertently poaching your neighbor's signal). If there is interference, or weak signal, I find that this speed fluctuates, and can be observed with the default Windows Perfmon.

start-run-perfmon.msc + Performance Object = Network Numbers agree with dslreports. + Performance Object = TCP "current bandwidth"

Reply to
dold

On Wed, 9 Aug 2006 21:01:19 +0000 (UTC), snipped-for-privacy@XReXXLower.usenet.us.com wrote in :

That would indicate an 802.11g connection, but otherwise may not be meaningful, since even poor connections may report maximum speed when idle. Put the link under heavy load before checking.

Reply to
John Navas

I get a good connection. Like I said in one of the above posts, I am right beside the wireless router when I run my tests.

I live >> Seriously though. Is it just simply interference that is causing me to

Reply to
Greg

On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 19:23:07 GMT, "Greg" wrote in :

The easy way to tell for sure is to unplug your wireless access point/router and see if the connection drops.

Reply to
John Navas

Even though it _is_ what you are testing, it's always a shock when that works ;-)

My first SBC DSL-gone-bad worked like that... I unplugged the DSL modem from the wall, phone and AC, and the helpful customer service tech was still able to ping my "working" modem.

Then they realized that something had been misconfigured.

Reply to
dold

Reply to
Greg

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