compatible network card??

MarkY91

so ive just got a free upgrade to 120mb upc and i didnt know why i couldnt get anything above 41mb speeds and then i researched and now know about wireless network cards and some are not as good as others and mine cant receive high speeds.


my laptop is a lenovo ideapad z580 with 802.11B. the name of the card seems to be Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter


i then looked at mini usb wirelsss n adaptors and reviews say the reception isnt the best so my best option is to replace my network card but i cant find any compatible ones that will worth. ive been looking around for ages. could someone possibly link me to a specific card to buy? looking for a cheap one as im on a budget


thanks all

Blitz17

MarkY91 wrote: »

so ive just got a free upgrade to 120mb upc and i didnt know why i couldnt get anything above 41mb speeds and then i researched and now know about wireless network cards and some are not as good as others and mine cant receive high speeds.


my laptop is a lenovo ideapad z580 with 802.11B. the name of the card seems to be Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter


i then looked at mini usb wirelsss n adaptors and reviews say the reception isnt the best so my best option is to replace my network card but i cant find any compatible ones that will worth. ive been looking around for ages. could someone possibly link me to a specific card to buy? looking for a cheap one as im on a budget


thanks all

The wifi card you fit wont allow the laptop to boot unless its on the Lenovo whitelist and has a Lenovo FRU. Had this issue before and it was impossible to find a replacement. You will have to flash a modded BIOS that removes the wifi card restrictions, then you can get any wifi card.

MarkY91

Blitz17 wrote: »

The wifi card you fit wont allow the laptop to boot unless its on the Lenovo whitelist and has a Lenovo FRU. Had this issue before and it was impossible to find a replacement. You will have to flash a modded BIOS that removes the wifi card restrictions, then you can get any wifi card.

thats what ive seen online. i dont know how to do that or even fully understand what it means will i just be better off with the mini usb wifi adaptor yeah?

Cuddlesworth

MarkY91 wrote: »

will i just be better off with the mini usb wifi adaptor yeah?

Nope, since your current adapter is rated for 2.4Ghz Wireless N and the box provided by UPC is also rated for only 2.4Ghz Wireless N. 40-60Mbps is pretty realistic speed for that setup.

First I'd check the UPC modem and make sure the wireless bandwidth is set for 40mhz instead of auto/20mhz. Then test with all devices in your house to see if they still work. If they do great, if they don't then obviously set it back.

The other option replacing buying a new router and adapter. Both would need to be dual channel and the AC standard. Then you can realistically see up to 150Mbps real world speeds.

General rule of thumb with wireless is around 40% of advertised link speed with a single active device.

MarkY91

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Nope, since your current adapter is rated for 2.4Ghz Wireless N and the box provided by UPC is also rated for only 2.4Ghz Wireless N. 40-60Mbps is pretty realistic speed for that setup.

First I'd check the UPC modem and make sure the wireless bandwidth is set for 40mhz instead of auto/20mhz. Then test with all devices in your house to see if they still work. If they do great, if they don't then obviously set it back.

The other option replacing buying a new router and adapter. Both would need to be dual channel and the AC standard. Then you can realistically see up to 150Mbps real world speeds.

General rule of thumb with wireless is around 40% of advertised link speed with a single active device.

i already have my epc3925 bridged with a netgear wndr3400 thats dual band. i aint looking to get the whole 120mb as advertised. 80 would do me

Cuddlesworth

Looks like there are no supported dual band cards for the Z580. You can try a USB adapter but I don't like them on laptops. I've seen too many destroyed USB ports to recommend them.

MarkY91

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Looks like there are no supported dual band cards for the Z580. You can try a USB adapter but I don't like them on laptops. I've seen too many destroyed USB ports to recommend them.

any supported 2.4hz cards? i would settle with like 60mb connection. im currently getting 34 on my 802.11b card

Cuddlesworth

MarkY91 wrote: »

any supported 2.4hz cards? i would settle with like 60mb connection. im currently getting 34 on my 802.11b card

Your adapter should be using wireless n. Its capable of it. Is 34 the connected speed or the result of a site like speed test?

Blitz17

MarkY91 wrote: »

any supported 2.4hz cards? i would settle with like 60mb connection. im currently getting 34 on my 802.11b card

Go looking at bios-mods.com for a modded Z580 bios with restrictions removed and flash it. Please be 100% that you have the right one if u do find one. I done that with my Z570 and bought a Intel 5300 card off eBay for a tenner. All good

MarkY91

Blitz17 wrote: »

Go looking at bios-mods.com for a modded Z580 bios with restrictions removed and flash it. Please be 100% that you have the right one if u do find one. I done that with my Z570 and bought a Intel 5300 card off eBay for a tenner. All good

i looked into flashing last night and there were so many steps for things i dont understand but ill give it a go anyway. thanks for the link. ill check it out

MarkY91

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Your adapter should be using wireless n. Its capable of it. Is 34 the connected speed or the result of a site like speed test?

but when i go to my cards settings and all, it says its only 802.11b and yes thats through speed test and the upc website.


when i click on my wifi on bottom right of my screen and go to my network, it says its 65.0mbps. is that the maximum my card can handle? if i put in a 802.11n card would it say 300mbps or so?

heffsarmy

I had one of these cards in my Asus N55S laptop, it worked at 150Mbps wireless N. The specs for your card below.

http://www.qca.qualcomm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/AR9285.pdf

Cuddlesworth

MarkY91 wrote: »

but when i go to my cards settings and all, it says its only 802.11b and yes thats through speed test and the upc website.


when i click on my wifi on bottom right of my screen and go to my network, it says its 65.0mbps. is that the maximum my card can handle? if i put in a 802.11n card would it say 300mbps or so?

There is no way its using wireless B, since your speed would at best be capable of 5-7Mbps. Your already wireless, probably at 20Mhz.

How far away from the router are you?

mad turnip

If you upgrade your network card, your laptops hard disk will be the bottle neck and the network card will have been a waste. Just enjoy your 41mb on your laptop because ALL the hardware can't handle more than that.

The extra 80mb really is for more users in the home not for one person to use up 120mb of bandwidth.

Cuddlesworth

mad turnip wrote: »

If you upgrade your network card, your laptops hard disk will be the bottle neck and the network card will have been a waste. Just enjoy your 41mb on your laptop because ALL the hardware can't handle more than that.

The extra 80mb really is for more users in the home not for one person to use up 120mb of bandwidth.

You should learn the difference between a MB and a Mb.

Your broadband is measured in Megabit's per second. Hard drive speed is traditionally measured in Megabytes per second. A normal 7,200 rpm drive is capable of sustained writes of around 800Mbps(bits) or 80MBps(bytes). A SSD can do around 2400Mbps(bits). So my 120Mbps UPC connection could possibly be viewed as needing as slight upgrade to push my "hardware".

That's even ignoring the fact that streaming video and data downloads can be cached to ram.

mad turnip

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

You should learn the difference between a MB and a Mb.

Your broadband is measured in Megabit's per second. Hard drive speed is traditionally measured in Megabytes per second. A normal 7,200 rpm drive is capable of sustained writes of around 800Mbps(bits) or 80MBps(bytes). A SSD can do around 2400Mbps(bits). So my 120Mbps UPC connection could possibly be viewed as needing as slight upgrade to push my "hardware".

That's even ignoring the fact that streaming video and data downloads can be cached to ram.

I'm quite aware of the difference, my opinion is based on:

If his laptop is using wireless b, I'm presuming its quite old. Old hard disks are never 7200 rpm there 5400 rpm, also I'm presuming he is looking to save his data as I've never heard anyone go wow look at me stream netflix at 120Mb/s as long as its buffering enough people are usually happy. If he is to increase his network bandwidth for file transfers he will be increasing his writes to the disk which will slow down other applications as the disk will be busy more often. It may be well capable of increasing the write speed right up to 50 MB/s but in a laptop I wouldn't advice people trying to push their laptop to extremes.

I don't have much numbers to back this up, but my friend who I believe is using wireless g took 2 hours for a 9gb download on steam as his disk was always busy, while it took my 7200 rpm desktop drive less than 10 minutes, and I'm on 50mb UPC while he is on 120mb.

In general I would just recommend the OP not to get the upgrade, as its most likely not needed!

Luck100

50 mbps = 50/8 MBps = 6.25 MBps.

So a 9 GB = 9000 MB download would take 9000/6.25 = 1440 seconds = 24 minutes.

No way you downloaded 9 GB in less than 10 minutes with a 50 MBps connection.

MarkY91

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/1296121/lenovo-ideapad-z580/specifications thats my laptop. it says there its wireless N. so im a little confused now

but here is where it says on my laptop im wireless B..

and here it insidcates i can only get a mximum of 65mbps i presume?


maybe ive it set up wrong is the reason. im so confused now seeing as expert reviews says my laptop is 802.11n

Luck100

AR9285 is 802.11n. But it will also do older wifi standards such as g or b. If your router is running g for some reason your wifi card will use g. I think some n routers will drop back to g if there are any g-only devices connecting. Have a look at the control panel on your router. You might need to plug a laptop directly into the router to access the control web page.

Edit: Just remembered, I had to change the settings on my N router to get the speed up. They run on a single 20 MHz channel by default, but if you change the settings it can use two adjacent channels for 40 MHz. May not work if you've got a lot of other wifi signals in your vicinity.

MarkY91

Luck100 wrote: »

AR9285 is 802.11n. But it will also do older wifi standards such as g or b. If your router is running g for some reason your wifi card will use g. I think some n routers will drop back to g if there are any g-only devices connecting. Have a look at the control panel on your router. You might need to plug a laptop directly into the router to access the control web page.

Edit: Just remembered, I had to change the settings on my N router to get the speed up. They run on a single 20 MHz channel by default, but if you change the settings it can use two adjacent channels for 40 MHz. May not work if you've got a lot of other wifi signals in your vicinity.

inSSIDer says my router is outputting N. ill go googling again and hopefully come up with an answer. my driver was version 3.000 something. i got it to version 10.000 something and still no luck. i also enabled the adhoc 11n thingy solely because it said 11n. ill go to my netgear wndr3400's config page and see what i can try do

Luck100

You don't want adhoc 11n enabled. That's a device-to-device 11n protocol that bypasses the router. The channel width settings have to be set from the router - the wifi card has no control over that.

MarkY91

Luck100 wrote: »

You don't want adhoc 11n enabled. That's a device-to-device 11n protocol that bypasses the router. The channel width settings have to be set from the router - the wifi card has no control over that.

woops ill disable it. i read online that 30mb or so is all i can expect from my wifi card even though its wireless N. ill end up getting a decent wifi card in a few weeks

heffsarmy

Theres nothing wrong with your wifi card, log onto your wifi router as Luck100 suggested and change the channel width to 40Mhz or auto, then check the laptop signal strenght, sit beside the router.

MarkY91

heffsarmy wrote: »

Theres nothing wrong with your wifi card, log onto your wifi router as Luck100 suggested and change the channel width to 40Mhz or auto, then check the laptop signal strenght, sit beside the router.

i did that by changing the mode form up to 300mbps to 150...same results. i disabled WWM because it was usggested online..still nothing

im only getting 17mb download right now

heffsarmy

put up a screen shot of your wifi router

MarkY91

heffsarmy wrote: »

put up a screen shot of your wifi router

but as posted above, my connection speed is 65mbps but i do see other peoples as 150mbps. i would need a better wifi card to get better speeds from what i can see

heffsarmy

I presume the interface on your wif router looks like the attached picture, just make sure the settings of channel and mode are set up them same. If your getting the same speed, check the other devices connected to the router and power them off and then check the speed.

heffsarmy

You could disconnect the netgear wifi router and set up the cisco epc 3925 with wifi enabled, the cisco allows you to manually set channel width 40Mhz, this should give you the full 150Mbps.

MarkY91

heffsarmy wrote: »

You could disconnect the netgear wifi router and set up the cisco epc 3925 with wifi enabled, the cisco allows you to manually set channel width 40Mhz, this should give you the full 150Mbps.

but the reason why i have it bridged to a netgear is because the epc would drop regulary and it was just crap like everyone on boards says. i might give it a try though and if its still being crap then ill just bridge it back up and settle for what i got

Luck100

Base on this wiki, your router only supports 40MHz (dual channel) in the 5GHz band. So if your wifi card (and other device connecting to the router) works on 5GHz you should switch to 5GHz in the router configuration. Otherwise you're stuck with the speeds you're getting now.

MarkY91

Luck100 wrote: »

Base on this wiki, your router only supports 40MHz (dual channel) in the 5GHz band. So if your wifi card (and other device connecting to the router) works on 5GHz you should switch to 5GHz in the router configuration. Otherwise you're stuck with the speeds you're getting now.

my wifi card doesnt support 5ghz. so ill have to do this BIOs mod mentioned the other day and then buy a 5ghz wifi card

MarkY91

ok so wired on ecp3925 i was getting 95mb download. wireless i was getting the same as i was with my bridged netopia. so i just went back to my bridged netopia and will probably upgrade my wifi card