Wireless Broadband Issues

[Titsy]

Ok, Chris and I had Sky broadband plummed in just over a week ago. We opted for the 16Mb connection and up until last night thought we were only getting 2.8Mb in download tests.

Last night I did a speed test using a wired LAN connection to the router and got consistant speed test results of 10.7Mb. The router shows a connection to the exchange at 14.4Mb which is quite reasonable.

Our question is, what the hell can we do to get the wireless speed up?

we are both using 54Mbit wireless connections.

There are quite a few wireless networks in the street, and I have tried using different channels, but to no avail...

Help!

[Allanv]

what hardware are you using and when you test the wireless is it in the same room with line of site?

[Titsy]

The router is a Netgear DG834GT. The tests I was running last night were within about a metre of the router, and Chris's PC is across the other side of the room (maybe 3.5m away) and got the same results.

When I serveyed within a metre of our router I could still see 3 other networks in the neighbourhood.

[Allanv]

check the dhcp list on the router see if anyone else is connected by wireless

[F Body]

Quoting: Titsy

There are quite a few wireless networks in the street,

Exactly the reason I went back to hardwired with three sockets in different rooms, according to my "geek"  it's the only way to get speed and security

[Titsy]

Quoting: Allanv

check the dhcp list on the router see if anyone else is connected by wirel

No one else is using our connection. It's secured with a common WPA key out of the box. I litterelly went from doing a speed test with the wired cable plugged in, to removing it and doing the test agine over wireless.

[HardRockCamaro]

Just as a sanity check:

Plug one machine into the router via a cable.

Transfer a *large* file from the wireless machine to the wired one and time how long it takes.  Ideally use a file of a few hundred megs.
Get the figure in MB for the file and divide by the no of seconds it took then multiply by 8.


Does your wireless card driver give signal and noise figures?
Or can you download sometihng that does?  Maybe Kismet ?

Also are you sure you don't have any "b" rated wireless equipment on your network?  If so that will pull the speed down from "g" to "b" for all users of the wireless network.

[Titsy]

Quoting: F Body

Exactly the reason I went back to hardwired

Sadly I don't think Dean is going to let us route network cables through the house...

[Pod]

Quoting: Titsy

We opted for the 16Mb connection and up until last night thought we were only getting 2.8Mb in download tests.

Last night I did a speed test using a wired LAN connection to the router and got consistant speed test results of 10.7Mb. The router shows a connection to the exchange at 14.4Mb which is quite reasonable.

Can you confirm what you (and Sky) mean by Mb?

54mbit wireless is actually about 6.8MB (megabytes) per second. In reality, that's closer to 4-5MB at the most.

What wireless channels are your bits of kit on and which channels are your neighbours using?
'netstumbler' (see google)  is great for checking this kind of thing.

The other point is that most ISP's speed ratings are 'up to' such and such a speed. It's quite likely you'll get less than that depending on how many other people are sharing your section of the network at the same time.

[FUBAR]

Lucky g!ts anyway, virgin media and other companies still list the maximum speed attainable for my address & phone number as 0.5mb!!

[Titsy]

Quoting: HardRockCamaro

Also are you sure you don't have any "b" rated wireless equipment on your network? If so that will pull the speed down from "g" to "b" for all users of the wireless network.

Both PC's have 'g' rated, infact i've set the router to only accept type 'g' connections.

Quoting: Pod

Can you confirm what you (and Sky) mean by Mb?

Mb is megabit; MB is MegaByte

We have an upto 16Megabits/s connection
The connection to the exchange is at 14.7Megabits/s
The wire speed test gave 10.7Megabits/s
The wireless speed test gave 2.8Megabits/s

[Titsy]

Quoting: FUBAR

Lucky g!ts anyway, virgin media and other companies still list the maximum speed attainable for my address & phone number as 0.5mb!!

Want to rent a room if the pole moves out?

[Titsy]

OK, the other networks I have found are on channels 1, 2, 6, and 11. We are on channel 3

[Titsy]

Our SNR is around 60, the other networks are around 20 or less

[Roadkill]

Isn't 2.8 enough ?

I didn't know there was THAT much gay porn out there to download !

[Titsy]

Quoting: Roadkill

Isn't 2.8 enough ?

Not when your paying for 16, and not when Chris is killing all the bandwidth with uTorrents...

Quoting: Roadkill

I didn't know there was THAT much gay porn out there to download !

I'll ignore that comment...

[Pod]

I'd try some other channels. They overlap, so I'd try somewhere around 8.
Basically try a few different ones and see if it makes any difference.

What are you using for the speed tests?
I presume you are doing the test with only one computer on at the time.
What actual download speeds are you getting?

[Allanv]

your not running anything else while testing like utorrent?

do a google for XP SP2 networked and try downloading that for a bit with everything shut down...

wireless will always produce lower results than wired

[Allanv]

do a wired and wireless ping test for me to check latency..

post the results for both

[Titsy]

Have set the wireless channel to 8

Quoting: Pod

What are you using for the speed tests?

The thinkbroadband.com speedtest

I've run the following testes within 2m of the router and with only one computer connected and nothing but the test using bandwidth

Quoting: Wireless Ping

Pinging mkb.cc [68.178.254.85] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 68.178.254.85: bytes=32 time=180ms TTL=47
Reply from 68.178.254.85: bytes=32 time=179ms TTL=47
Reply from 68.178.254.85: bytes=32 time=182ms TTL=47
Reply from 68.178.254.85: bytes=32 time=185ms TTL=47

Ping statistics for 68.178.254.85:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 179ms, Maximum = 185ms, Average = 181ms

Quoting: Wired Ping

Pinging mkb.cc [68.178.254.85] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 68.178.254.85: bytes=32 time=181ms TTL=47
Reply from 68.178.254.85: bytes=32 time=180ms TTL=47
Reply from 68.178.254.85: bytes=32 time=180ms TTL=47
Reply from 68.178.254.85: bytes=32 time=180ms TTL=47

Ping statistics for 68.178.254.85:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 180ms, Maximum = 181ms, Average = 180ms

Quoting: ThinkBroadband Speed Test - Wireless

Speed Test Results
Date 14/08/07 21:32:07
Speed Down 2876.49 Kbps ( 2.8 Mbps )
Speed Up 610.16 Kbps ( 0.6 Mbps )
Port 8095
Server speedtest1.adslguide.org.uk

Quoting: ThinkBroadband Speed Test - Wired

Speed Test Results
Date 14/08/07 21:28:26
Speed Down 10703.30 Kbps ( 10.5 Mbps )
Speed Up 602.10 Kbps ( 0.6 Mbps )
Port 8095
Server speedtest1.adslguide.org.uk

[Pod]

Hmm....

Buy some long cables and route them round the house?

If you can, set everything to "b" rather than "g" and see what result you get.
You haven't got any microwaves in the room with you?
Try moving the aerials around.

It's unusual for the wireless speed to be that much slower than wired (especially off the same router), but it's not *that* shocking.

[Roadkill]

Quoting: Pod

Buy some long cables and route them round the house?

Yeah, do that.

I've got no plans to permanently fit cables any where but if you want to loose-route them, that's up to you.

[Losty]

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=46494&source=2001&doy=search

and you could prolly get them cheaper elsewhere

[Incursus]

Quoting: Losty

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=46494&source=2001&doy=search

Yeah i've heard of these

[Incursus]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127073/product_info/rb/0