Why is this wireless connection so slow??

(802.11g)

You really expect an answer from that measly drop of info?

How far apart are the client and AP? What OS?

Provide some information....

Uh, 14kWHATps? 14KB/s on 802.11g would be fairly reasonable, 14Kb/s would indicate a problem.

In article , Doug Jamal wrote: :If I'm not mistaken, the MR814 is a wireless B router and wirelessly, :the alleged maximum transfer speed is 11 mbps.

Not exactly. The 11 Mbps refers to the maximum raw bit rate. There are a lot of overhead octets and error correction bits, that act together to take the maximum transfer speed to considerably lower than 11 Mbps.

:> I am only getting 14 kps download speeds with RoadRunner broadband. The :> router is Netgear MR814 and wireless NIC is Airlink AWLH3025 (802.11g)

:Uh, 14kWHATps? 14KB/s on 802.11g would be fairly reasonable, 14Kb/s :would indicate a problem.

14 Kbytes/s is poor transfer speed on -any- wireless system.

The lowest raw bit rate for any 802.11b or 802.11g wireless system is 1 megabits per second. At a rough approximation, 40% of that raw bit rate is consumed by overheads and error correction bits, leaving at least 600000 bits/s for payloads. That's 75 Kbytes/s, or about

5 times faster than the OP is indicating. The OP isn't going to have so much latency as to reduce TCP transfer rates by a factor of five due to filling up the sliding window -- latency that high would require links many many times longer than the signal range of that combination of equipment.

Now, it is possible that the OP is having congestion problems between the points he is measuring the transfer over -- for example, the OP might be using cable modem with a loop shared by some friendly neighbourhood kazaa server. Nominal -upload- rates are often about 512 Kbit/s for residential broadband... but that would still be noticably faster than 14 Kbyte/s. The rate that the OP is stating would be about consistant with *uploads* for what is often sold under the name "DSL.Lite" (512 Kbit/s download, 128 Kbit/s upload).

Anytime you see a *really* bad transfer throughput, the first thing that one should suspect is that one has a duplex mismatch at some stage in the chain. In the OP's case, the mismatch could be between the MR814 and the RoadRunner broadband modem.

Arrrgh. Sure. Total brain fade on my part.

the connections says 11 Mbps, the router is only 25 feet away down some stairs, all the operating systems on the network use XP. When other people are on the network I can barely surf. Will switching channels on the router fix the problem? I live in a condominium community so are the neighbors causing interferrence?

In article , Mike wrote: :the connections says 11 Mbps, the router is only 25 feet away down some :stairs, all the operating systems on the network use XP. When other people :are on the network I can barely surf. Will switching channels on the router :fix the problem? I live in a condominium community so are the neighbors :causing interferrence?

Possibly, but we don't have sufficient information.

Is the wireless router locked down with an encryption key that only you know? If not, then others may be (deliberately or accidently) associating with the wireless router, and you may be encountering some collision avoidance measures... and of course the others might be using up all the bandwidth.

But before getting into that, I would strongly recommend that you check the duplex settings of the wireless router to the RoadRunner broadband modem. The speeds you are seeing very much suggest that you have a mismatch, such as if one of the devices is set to autonegotiate and the other one is set at a fixed speed and duplex. It is vital that both devices be set the same way -- either both set to autonegotiate, or both set to a fixed speed and duplex.

If the wireless router believes the link is full duplex then the wireless router will believe that it is safe to set your TCP 'ACK' packets back up the wire at the same time the broadband modem is sending data down the wire [full duplex == can send and receive at the same time.] If, though, the broadband modem is either set to half duplex or set to autonegotiate when the wireless router is set not to negotiate, then the broadband modem is not going to expect those returning ACKs, and is going to treat them as "late collisions" and abort sending the packet. Normal TCP sends ACKs every second packet, but your performance ends up much worse than that: the other end isn't going to receive the ACK and so it is going to resend not just the packet that got the late collission but also the two packets prior that the ACK would have covered; that's 3 packets, and that's going to set off another ACK that's going to lead to another late collission... There are also some timeouts involved before retransmissions start, and those timeouts can be as long as 1/2 second each (with 1/5 second fairly common.)

When you have a duplex mismatch, the wonder is not that the transmission ends up so slow: the wonder is that you get any data through at all.

whats the best setting for speed? autonegotiate? fixed speed? duplex?

In article , Mike wrote: :whats the best setting for speed? autonegotiate? fixed speed? duplex?

The standard recommendation is to set fixed speed and duplex on both side of any infrastructure link or link to any important server, and to set autonegotiate on both sides of the link to lesser devices.

The reasoning is that infrastructure links and important servers seldom change without the network people knowing ahead of time, so the driving factor on those links is that they should be available as much as possible, so take a fixed setting.

For lesser devices, the reasoning is that they often change without notice and it can be a pain for admins to keep up, so go for the convenience of autonegiation. It might bite you with some equipment, but -overall- you are likely to have fewer calls.

I bought an Airlink 8dbi antenna and it seems to have solved the problem. I guess it was an issue of the wireless PCI card picking up the signal from the router. The antenna only set me back $9.95