OT- wireless router question.

We just got Dsl this week.We had a wireless router installed with the computer so my son could use his laptop.The laptop says the signal is good,but it's so slow you can't use it.The laptop is probably 4 or 5 years old.He says it works good a burger king or some of the other fast food places that have internet.Any ideas?

Kind of the same problem here.

My Dell computer is two years old.

We have an old Gateway that has been programed with windows by a professional guru.

we have them on a wireless router to mine as main.

My remote assistance server says the old computer don't have as much memory so it makes that one slower , sometimes causing it to shut down.

I'm no expert, but distance from the Laptop to the router is a factor. Try it close to the router.

What speed dsl do you have? I know that when I got mine and added a wireless router it was really slow especially when we both were on the net. Had to add more speed and at more cost. Not sure if this is what is going on or not, but it may be worth a try

Dave

I have the cheaper Verision Dsl. There is a faster package, but it is $50 more per month. I can justify $30, but $80 seems high. Especially when it seems to work pretty well. We run 2 laptops and a desktop off the router. The laptops are only 1 year old, pretty fast, tho.

We have embarq phone and internet for 50 bucks per month.It's not the high,high speed stuff.It changes pages usually within 5 seconds.That's way better than the dial up we had.We have a dell desktop that's probably 4 years old.It's doing some weird stuff,but it still works.I don't want anymore dells.We have probably spent 300 on this one in repairs.I'm thinking of buying one of those E machines from walmart.The laptop was givin to my son from his aunt.It was an expensive dell about 4 or 5 years ago.But it sure is slow.Would a new hardrive help it speed up?

It's the same 1 ft away or in the basement.

Try using USB wireless adaptor. No guarantee but it may help.

I'm no expert by a long shot I just go by what the guy that works on mine says.

Hr says I should be able to put my antenna anywhere within 100' from the base and it should work.
I have dial up from windstream.

I use my cc cleaner every shutdown and defrag it weekly.

Although I sometimes still get shut down.

He says it is because of not enough memory but he can fix that also but has to replace the mother board.

My wireless router also has a Cat 5/6 cable wired connection. Suggest you connect your son's computer to the wire connection first and check the speed. If the speed improves, my guess is you have a wireless configuration problem between computer and router. Bottom line: try the wired connection to the internet first, make that work, then move to the wireless connection...that's how I troubleshoot my wireless connection. BTW: using my wireless conntection right now....good luck!!

STAY AWAY FROM WALMART BARGIN COMPUTERS!!! You may just be overloading the dsl with two computers.

Wireless will inherantly be slower that Cat 5 (copper) connections. Additionally, I suspect that if you got a new router, it is probably a wireless G router running at 54MB but the laptop, being older, is running at 10MB.

I don"t expect your issue to be a DSL issue as wireless or copper connection, they are both using the same upload and download path. So if you are seeing faster speeds when connected with cable than with wireless, it is probably because of the inherant and additional overhead on wireless and/or interferance from other devices running the same frequency.

Many ISP's way "oversubscribe" their Internet service by selling high-speed to way more customers than their "back-end" connection to the Internet can support...

Especially if it is faster early in the morning and slower from about 6:00PM-11:00PM (when everyone is home playing on the Internet), that may be the bulk of your problem.

Also, if you didn't protect your wireless signal with an encryption key, you might have a bunch of neighbors glomming onto your signal.

I set a wireless router up in the front room one time where I used to live - and by the time I got back to the bedroom to test it out - I was already the 2nd user on my wireless!!! The kids across the street had already found it and associated to my network...

The test of trying it wireless & then just plugging your laptop into a wired connection on the router is also a very good suggestion to narrow it down to your ADSL service or the wired vs wireless...

Just don't leave both connections going simultaneously on your laptop - Windows gets very confused with multiple network connections...

HH

Do you have the network secured (encrypted)?

Try it with a cable directly to the router first. If that's okay, try the wireless unsecured for a little while to see if he gets full speed that way. If that works try some of the weaker encryption settings. If his laptop has XP Home Edition it could well have trouble with a secured network.

Depends on how much RAM is in it... You'll need 256 Mb at least for Windows XP to have any performance at all. 512 would be good for a laptop that old.

And also how many programs (processes) are listed to start every time Windows boots up...

Windows being "clean" is the most important thing. A typical PC will have between 25-75 processes that launch on boot up. How much "crap" has been accumulated is the single most important determinant on what performance you can coax out of a given PC...

Howard

I should have also said - no, a new hard drive will not likely help.

The amount of RAM and # and type of processes running are vastly more important...


HH

If you have a 100Mbs connection and one comp. is using 75Mbs the other is going to be slow.
Try it with only one on line at a time.

If you find that it is the encryption that is slowing your wifi connection you can turn it off and still be able to stop others from using your network. To do this you enable MAC address filtering. Once you turn MAC filtering on you have to enter each wireless device's MAC address into a table on the router. Don't forget to change the SSID from the default and to not broadcast the SSID. That stops them two ways if they don't know your SSID they can't get on and if their MAC isn't in the table they can't get on. To connect the notebook the first time you have enter the MAC into the router table. Then on the notebook create a new wireless connection and type in the SSID (remeber it is case sensitive) you changed it to in the router. It will not auto discover your network. You may get a wireless network found ssid not broadcast if he has a netowrk sniffer loaded. The only draw back to this is that it is possible for someone to receive your broadcasts and do a packet capture on the stream and since it is not encypted they could see what you are sending and receiving but that is very unlikely as it would take alot of effort on their part to do so and they would have to be close by. Your wireless router will likely have a range of just a 100 feet or so less if it has to go through walls. (the lower in the house the antenna is the shorter the range is as well) So they would have to be close by do anything. To test your area of coverage take the laptop on a walkabout. You will be able to get a fairly accurate idea of how far away some nefarious person woud have to be to capture any transmissions. Some notebooks have a better antenna than others so you could add a bit to the coverage area to account for that. BTW none of this affects a wired connection.