Wifi problem

calps

Hi folks,

I hope one of you may be able to shed some light on an issue I've encountered.

My parents have internet supplied over the air via a local provider, which in turn is fed into the house and through a wirless router to spead the love to all inside. There is also a wired connection from the router to their desktop.
My problem is this - whenever the desktop is on (internet not necessarily being used) the wifi becomes almost unuseable (very slow page load time, timeouts etc). To compound all this though, the wired connection on the desktop is even worse, and will only load pages about 10% of the time (even when there are no other devices using the wifi). With the desktop disconnected from the router I'm getting steady speeds of approx 3MBs both down and up.

Given that the wifi is ok when the desktop isn't sapping it up, i'm stopping short of telling them to throw it out, but if anyone could help me to understand why the desktop is performing so badly before that, i'd appreciate it.

Calps

areyawell

What exactly do you mean over the air via a local provider? Is the main connection wireless using 3g? or is it something like wiimax? or is is DSL? cable?

calps

It's not via 3G. The exact definition for what it is escapes me. It's broadcast from a water tower a few miles away and we have a dish at the house which recieves the signal. The provider is Fastcom.

areyawell

There must be something running on the desktop, like Windows automatic updates or do you have something like utorrent installed?

-( i )- Wicker

You can use something like wireshark to see whats using all the bandwidth

calps

Hi Folks, thanks for the feedback. uTorrent is installed, never thought of that. Will remove and give things a look over with wireshark afterwards.

areyawell

calps wrote: »

Hi Folks, thanks for the feedback. uTorrent is installed, never thought of that. Will remove and give things a look over with wireshark afterwards.

Torrents are probably seeding and using up all your bandwith. That should fix the problem hopefully

yoyo

Yep torrents are constantly uploading and downloading so will bring any broadband to it's knees doing so. You also need to be aware that torrents also upload and most providers count your download limits with the upload amount so with torrents you could exceed your broadband limits fairly quickly if not careful.

Nick

calps

The evil uTorrent program has been banished to kilobyte heaven and the problem is now solved!
Thanks for all the help folks.

Overheal

calps wrote: »

The evil uTorrent program has been banished to kilobyte heaven and the problem is now solved!
Thanks for all the help folks.

It's actually a lovely program but I do especially ensure that it's upload and download rates are capped. the program makes setting those up painless.

In my early days using it I didn't do this and imagine how our performance on our VoIP phone was. Took us an hour with tech support to realize what it was because we could hear them (download) but nobody could hear us (upload). In a later instance I ran it running full speed overnight, forgetting it was my old man's day off and apparently in the wee hours of that morning when he tried to get on to his email and it was slow as balls he called our provider and he upgraded our package... which I didn't really see a problem with. Never told him, but I kept my damn mouth shut and started using the Scheduler tool in the program..

talkingpj

I wonder if anyone can help me with problem. When I have my wifi router plugged down stairs I can not get a wifi signal in the room directly above it upstairs. Though when I run a telephone cable all the way upstairs the wifi works perfectly downstairs. How can this be it makes no sense to me. I don't have any other wireless devices that could be disrupting the signal. If there is any expert out there please help.