What to do? Router making broadband slower

Bard

Hi,

I've got UPC's 50MB broadband with their Thomson router... all works very well - on one PC, but the router, for some reason, doesn't seem to like sharing the Internet with other PCs on the network (pops up as local access only no matter what I do) and its wi-fi range isn't exactly awesome, so I added another router (A DLink DIR-635) to the network and that solved that issue...

Only thing is, while connecting via the DLink gets the other computers online, when I run a test via Speedtest.net, I'm getting about 11 or 12 megabit - as opposed to the 49-50 megabit I'm getting on the main PC connected via wi-fi with the Thomson.

Can anyone shed light on it as to why?

vibe666

did you follow the guide by roast on how top put your other router into the DMZ of the thompson?

quite a lot of us are running our own router's that way and it's working (more or less) fine so far.

Bard

Yes, I put the IP address of the DLink router in as a DMZ host on the Thomson and it made no difference whatsoever to the speed achieved when connected through it.

Consistently getting 47-49 megabit speeds on speedtest.net when connected via wifi to the Thomson and getting 10-15 megabit speeds when connected via wifi to the DLink which is connected to the Thomson...

jor el

If you cable to the D-link, what do you get. This will tell you whether it's the D-links Wifi, or the connection between it and the Thomson that's at fault.

Bard

jor_el... you appear to be on the money there...

Plugging a laptop into the D-link with a cable and switching off its wi-fi gave me a 47+ megabit speed whereas when I unplugged the network cable and connected to it via wi-fi, it was back to ~15 megabit... so it seems the issue is the D-link's wi-fi...

Any way to fix this that you know of?

vibe666

Bard wrote: »

jor_el... you appear to be on the money there...

Plugging a laptop into the D-link with a cable and switching off its wi-fi gave me a 47+ megabit speed whereas when I unplugged the network cable and connected to it via wi-fi, it was back to ~15 megabit... so it seems the issue is the D-link's wi-fi...

Any way to fix this that you know of?

do you know if the d-link's wifi is on the same channel as the thompson's? did you do a wireless survey of your house with inSSIDer to see if there might be other wifi devices crowding the wireless spectrum and causing interference?

there's a bunch of things it could be, it's just a case of ruling out what it isn't to find out what it is.

Bard

um... kay...

Downloaded that inSSIDer and it shows my Thompson on Channel 1, d-link apparently on channel "13 +17" and neighbours (2) routers (weaker signals) on channels 6 and 11.

It shows all the routers except my d-link as full unbroken lines on the graph, where the d-link is a dashed line...

Not sure what to do...

Bard

As an experiment, I turned off the wifi on the Thompson and used channel 1 on the d-link instead ... then got speeds of 20-22 megabit through wifi, which was a bit better (still just under 50 megabit wired). I guess it's just a case of trying around the different channels until I find one with less interference?...

vibe666

w

Bard wrote: »

As an experiment, I turned off the wifi on the Thompson and used channel 1 on the d-link instead ... then got speeds of 20 megabit through wifi, which was a bit better (still just under 50 megabit wired). I guess it's just a case of trying around the different channels until I find one with less interference?...

pretty much.

you might want to see if the d-link has an option along the lines of 40Mhz or wide channels, although this may incroach on neighbours wifi if it is not in a very clear channel band with no overlapping networks as it pretty much doubles the bandwidth used for your wifi network.

you'll notice in inSSIDer that each channel overlaps with the channels either side of it, so if you have 3 different wireless networks on channels 9, 10 & 11 they will all be using some bandwidth from the surrounding channels, so the more you can minimise (or eliminate if you're lucky) this, the better.

Bard

Ah... I've put it on channel 13 and the signal seems steady enough, although only getting 20-22 megabit... but I reckon that'll be OK as the main PC is still in range of the UPC modem and getting the full 50 and the stuff that needs the range extended (PS3, etc.)... sure 20 meg will do that, I'm sure

vibe666

is the other PC's wireless adapter only 802.11g by any chance?

you most likely won't get more than 20-25mbps or so out of wireless G in real world conditions, so it's possible it's only connecting are wireless G speeds.

Bard

Yeah, it's only set to b/g and not n because the receiver I'll be using to put the TV online is an older one that can only handle WEP encryption. Not to worry anyway

lucernarian

Btw a standard 802.11g 20MHz channel as used by most current wifi devices will allow for a max throughput of 21 Mb/s when connected at "54 Mb/s". You'd want to use 802.11n to get the full 50 Mb/s over wifi and again that's dependent on signal strength and so on.