Improving Web speeds

burger1979

Hi,

i have broadband at home (3 meg speeds) but i am finding opening pages, such as boards, really slow. and when it comes to watching videos online such as youtube its slower, this might only be when i have one internet page open at anyone time. My computer is quite new (december 09) and i run wifi through the desktop through the wireless router with my broadband provider. the computer has an antenna to pick it up plugged into the back of it. computer make is dell vostro 220s and i run windows 7 on it.

can anyone tell me how to increase the speed without actually upgrading the broadband package??? i have a sky box but this does not connect to the landline and also a home phone. when i check the internet connection status on the computer it tells me that the speed is 54.0Mbps.

also how do i stop other people using my wireless?

thanks from someone not used to this thing

burger

BopNiblets

Setup a WPA or WPA2 encryption passkey on your routers wireless to stop others accessing it, you can usually do this by putting 192.169.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 or something (depending on the make of router) in your browser and logging in to the routers setup, then find the wireless settings.

Connect a cable to the router and laptop if possible, cable is always faster but less mobile, don't go too far away from the router with the laptop while on wireless.

Windows updates will download automatically on your laptop so it might be them hogging up all the bandwidth, check Windows Update see if it's downloading, if it is change to notifications only option and not automatic download/install, then connect to cable when it says there's some available.
Some other programs might be using the connection too, check in Task Manager-> Networking.

PogMoThoin

Get rid of all toolbars on Your browser.
Got Limewire, Frostwire or uTorrent etc running on Your pc?
Do You get better speeds when plugged in and not wireless?

zodac

BopNiblets wrote: »

Setup a WPA or WPA2 encryption passkey on your routers wireless to stop others accessing it, you can usually do this by putting 192.169.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 or something (depending on the make of router) in your browser and logging in to the routers setup, then find the wireless settings.

Connect a cable to the router and laptop if possible, cable is always faster but less mobile, don't go too far away from the router with the laptop while on wireless.

Windows updates will download automatically on your laptop so it might be them hogging up all the bandwidth, check Windows Update see if it's downloading, if it is change to notifications only option and not automatic download/install, then connect to cable when it says there's some available.
Some other programs might be using the connection too, check in Task Manager-> Networking.

192.168.2.1 is the standard for most makes of routers.

In my experience, even a mid-level wireless adaptor will perform fine for low speeds. Using the same computer, first connected by ethernet directly to the modem, then secondly connected by a wireless g router/adaptor, the drop in internet speed was minimal (ping suffered a bit, but even nothing over the top).

To the OP, you can't really increase your base speed without updating the package. However, you might not be getting all of your rated speed. the connection speed of "54.0Mbps" is how fast your adaptor is connecting to the wireless router. To get a proper indication of your speed, go to Speedtest.

You will probably get a bit less than your rated speed (~2.6-2.8). But if you're using it at a busy time (early evening/weekends) that speed can drop considerably. There's nothing much you can do about that I'm afraid. If there're too many people trying to use the same internet, the performance drops for eveyone.

To try improve your browsing experience, you can try use Google Chrome. There's nothing wrong with the other browsers, but Chrome is a bit more lightweight than the others, and you might notice a difference using it.

I gather your PC is a desktop?

You mentioned that your computer "has an antenna to pick it up plugged into the back of it", is this a usb wireless device which you obtained to give the computer wireless connectivity? Or is it the "optional" Dell 1505 Wireless-N PCIe Card installed (from Dell Website).

Reason for asking, is that the later would perform far greater than a USB dongle attached.

The 54Mbs you see is the wireless connectivity to you WLAN, your local network as such and not that of the internet.

If you could, the better option would be to connect a cable (Cat5) to your router, as wireless is prone to many interferences. It could be a case off changing the channel which your wireless card is listening on as it may be conflicting with your neighbours, or even a baby device thing (know I don't have kids).

If you could post what router you have?
And the above regarding what wireless interface you have on your Desktop.

You could also test your connection as a previous poster mentioned, if you try this site and it will give a comprehensive report.

burger1979

NoDrama wrote: »

I gather your PC is a desktop?

You mentioned that your computer "has an antenna to pick it up plugged into the back of it", is this a usb wireless device which you obtained to give the computer wireless connectivity? Or is it the "optional" Dell 1505 Wireless-N PCIe Card installed (from Dell Website).

Reason for asking, is that the later would perform far greater than a USB dongle attached.

.

i have that Dell 1505 installed on the computer. i dont have enough cable to connect the computer to the router, its the grey one from eircom that i use. How can i make sure that no one else is using my wireless? i have entered the WPA2 code again but when i check the internet properties again then it says that network availability is all users?? there are no other downloads happening (or none that i can se anyway how so i check that windows is not downloading something without me knowing?)

test showed the following???


Download speed 358 Kbps Upload speed 71 Kbps QOS 26 % RTT 920 ms Max Delay 506 ms Avg Delay 81 ms Max Bandwidth 2320 Kbps Route Speed 569 Kbps Forced Idle 80 % Route Conc 6.4 Download test s Upload test s

so where from here???

biko

Download ccleaner, this will make your PC generally faster. It just removes things like temp files you don't need anyway etc.

Uninstall all toolbars and similar - you want the browser as lean as possible. Also try using Google Chrome a while to see if that's faster then the current browser.

Scan the computer with MBAM and various online virus scanners.
www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
housecall.trendmicro.com
security.symantec.com
www.bitdefender.com/scanner/online/free.html

CrazyRabbit

Is your transfer speeds ok? Is there is an initial lag on connecting.

E.g. You click the bookmark for youtube and nothing happens for a few seconds. Then it opens quickly. When you try to play a youtube clip, again nothing happens for a few seconds then it plays/loads quickly.

If this is what is happening, then it's likely that the router is being overwhelmed. This usually occurs when you have lots of connections being made to your computer. P2P apps & several computers connecting to your router over wireless will cause this.

I found that another cause could be the max number of half-open tcp/ip connections for Windows. Microsoft brought in a patch which limits it to 10 half-open outgoing connections. It's better explained on the following site which also includes a way to increase the half-open connections.

http://half-open.com/