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I receive 50 Mbps from my internet provider. When I test the speed on the hard connected computer it shows that the speeds I receive are within an acceptable range of that number. However, when using my laptop just one room away from the router the speed drops of to just over 5 Mbps. I expect some drop off, but that is ridiculous. Is the router just a piece of junk or is there something I can do to improve this? Thanks.
Answer
Although WiFi is convenient for mobility, wireless interference can cause it's connection speed and quality to vary wildly.
Wireless signals are affected by many factors including distance, wall density, electrical interference, directional antenna range, etc.
All of these factors will affect your actual wireless range. As wireless connection quality varies the connection speeds are renegotiated. The connection may start at 150 Mbps and end up at less than 10 Mbps or drop entirely. Remember, this is the speed of the WLAN connection between your WiFi device and the router, not the Internet speed.
There are also various backward compatible wireless standards.
802.11b = 11 Mbps
802.11g = 54 Mbps
802.11n = 150 (300 ) Mbps
802.11ac = 500 (1000 ) Mbps
For either Ethernet or WiFi, the connection speed will always negotiate to the speed of the slowest device.
For example, a super fast 300 Mbps wireless n router can only connect to a wireless g laptop at a maximum of 54 Mbps. Again, remember, this is the speed of the WLAN connection between your WiFi device and the router, not the Internet speed.
For serious gaming or video streaming your best bet is a direct Ethernet connection. Ethernet is unaffected by wireless interference and will give you a rock solid, stable network connection.
That being said,
For stationary devices I always recommend Ethernet connections, however I realize that this is impractical for devices such as tablets, iPods, cell phones, etc.
For wireless connections, I would look at high performance routers or devices such as wireless extenders that can expand your wireless range.
One of my favorite high performance routers is the ASUS RT-N66U Dual-Band Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006QB1RPY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B006QB1RPY&linkCode=as2&tag=excharge-20
However, Just because a particular wireless router model works good at one location does not guarantee that it will have similar performance in a different location due to variances in the factors listed above.
In any case, You should try to centrally locate your wireless router or gateway up high and away from dense walls and electrical and 2.4 GHz wireless interference such as microwave ovens, cordless phones, baby monitors, etc.
You could also try adjusting the position of the router or relocating your device closer to the wireless router to obtain a stronger signal.
Depending on conditions and the area that you wish to cover you may also need a wireless extender.
The wireless range extender receives weak wireless signals and repeats or regenerates them to extend the signal range to greater distances.
Here are the two most popular highly rated models on Amazon.
Securifi Almond - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0087NZ31S/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0087NZ31S&linkCode=as2&tag=excharge-20
Netgear Universal WN3000RP - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004YAYM06/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004YAYM06&linkCode=as2&tag=excharge-20
No matter what you decide to buy,
As far as the brand goes, the brand is not as important as the model. Some manufacturers release a good model but the next is crap. I would look at the Amazon reviews of models that interest you. Even if you don't buy from Amazon the reviews will tell you a lot about which models to avoid. Look for at least 15 or more reviews with a 4 star or better rating. To be sure any device will meet your needs, it is a good idea to download and read the user manual before purchase.
Good Luck...
Although WiFi is convenient for mobility, wireless interference can cause it's connection speed and quality to vary wildly.
Wireless signals are affected by many factors including distance, wall density, electrical interference, directional antenna range, etc.
All of these factors will affect your actual wireless range. As wireless connection quality varies the connection speeds are renegotiated. The connection may start at 150 Mbps and end up at less than 10 Mbps or drop entirely. Remember, this is the speed of the WLAN connection between your WiFi device and the router, not the Internet speed.
There are also various backward compatible wireless standards.
802.11b = 11 Mbps
802.11g = 54 Mbps
802.11n = 150 (300 ) Mbps
802.11ac = 500 (1000 ) Mbps
For either Ethernet or WiFi, the connection speed will always negotiate to the speed of the slowest device.
For example, a super fast 300 Mbps wireless n router can only connect to a wireless g laptop at a maximum of 54 Mbps. Again, remember, this is the speed of the WLAN connection between your WiFi device and the router, not the Internet speed.
For serious gaming or video streaming your best bet is a direct Ethernet connection. Ethernet is unaffected by wireless interference and will give you a rock solid, stable network connection.
That being said,
For stationary devices I always recommend Ethernet connections, however I realize that this is impractical for devices such as tablets, iPods, cell phones, etc.
For wireless connections, I would look at high performance routers or devices such as wireless extenders that can expand your wireless range.
One of my favorite high performance routers is the ASUS RT-N66U Dual-Band Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006QB1RPY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B006QB1RPY&linkCode=as2&tag=excharge-20
However, Just because a particular wireless router model works good at one location does not guarantee that it will have similar performance in a different location due to variances in the factors listed above.
In any case, You should try to centrally locate your wireless router or gateway up high and away from dense walls and electrical and 2.4 GHz wireless interference such as microwave ovens, cordless phones, baby monitors, etc.
You could also try adjusting the position of the router or relocating your device closer to the wireless router to obtain a stronger signal.
Depending on conditions and the area that you wish to cover you may also need a wireless extender.
The wireless range extender receives weak wireless signals and repeats or regenerates them to extend the signal range to greater distances.
Here are the two most popular highly rated models on Amazon.
Securifi Almond - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0087NZ31S/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0087NZ31S&linkCode=as2&tag=excharge-20
Netgear Universal WN3000RP - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004YAYM06/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004YAYM06&linkCode=as2&tag=excharge-20
No matter what you decide to buy,
As far as the brand goes, the brand is not as important as the model. Some manufacturers release a good model but the next is crap. I would look at the Amazon reviews of models that interest you. Even if you don't buy from Amazon the reviews will tell you a lot about which models to avoid. Look for at least 15 or more reviews with a 4 star or better rating. To be sure any device will meet your needs, it is a good idea to download and read the user manual before purchase.
Good Luck...
How do speed up my file transfer speeds across my home network?
chig
I have a D-Link rangebooster G gold series router which is apparently supposed to have network speeds up to 108mbps or something like that right? I'm trying to transfer some files across but its going at an embarrassing 1.5mbps. I would almost make sense I had just put them on my external hdd first..
is there a way to speed this up?
Answer
I think there are two problems here that are leading to confusion. I suspect (but I could be wrong) that you're confusing megabits with megabytes. The 108mbps you should be able to get is megabits per second. It's possible that the 1.5mbps you're getting is megaBYTES per second. If you do a file transfer, chances are it will give you a speed in megabytes, rather than megabits. A megabyte is 8 megabits, so you might actually be getting 12megabits per second of your promised 108, rather than the 1.5 you thought you were getting.
Also, that 108Mbit promise has a couple unspoken conditions (probably listed out in fine print as a footnote of a footnote in the Chinese language section of your manual). For instance, since 802.11g only supports speeds up to 54Mbits, you need to have special D-Link wireless cards in order to support that full 108Mbits. Without it, you're only going to get up to 54Mbits.
Also, that 54Mbits is total throughput, not the speed of each connection. So if you're transferring from one wireless computer to another, then you're only going to get (at best) half of that speed (about 27Mbits), since it needs half the bandwidth for the transmission to the router, and the other half for the transmission to the other computer.
Finally, if you take into account this is consumer hardware and you probably don't have ideal conditions at your house, there's no reason why that won't cut the speed in half again, leaving you with about 13Mbits expected speed and 12Mbits actual speed.
All that being said, let me address your question of how to speed this up:
The first thing you should do is eliminate the second wireless leg (if it exists). Put one of your computers close to the router (or the router close to one of the computers) and connect the router to the computer via a wired Ethernet connection. That should provide a hefty boost of speed (it should nearly double).
Next, make sure you have an 802.11G card in your wireless computer. If it's 802.11B, then it will max out at 11Mbits. So getting an 802.11G network card for it will increase your speed dramatically.
Also, upgrade your firmware on your router. If there's a new firmware available, you should be able to get it from DLink's website. This might give a minor speed increase.
If you have any baby monitors, home phones, etc that are "2.4Ghz," turn them off, they can interfere with your wireless signal and slow your transfer speeds.
If you can get your speed up to 40Mbits (5 megabytes per second), then you are doing about as well as can be expected from consumer networking hardware. I doubt you'll get over about 25-30Mbits (3-4 megabytes per second), though.
On a side note, back in college we used to be able to get about 5-10 megabytes per second transfer speed by loading files on an iPod (via 400Mbit Firewire), walking down the hall, and loading them on another computer. You could probably achieve similar results with your external hard drive, as you suggested. So I'd go that route for large transfers such as this.
Good luck!
I think there are two problems here that are leading to confusion. I suspect (but I could be wrong) that you're confusing megabits with megabytes. The 108mbps you should be able to get is megabits per second. It's possible that the 1.5mbps you're getting is megaBYTES per second. If you do a file transfer, chances are it will give you a speed in megabytes, rather than megabits. A megabyte is 8 megabits, so you might actually be getting 12megabits per second of your promised 108, rather than the 1.5 you thought you were getting.
Also, that 108Mbit promise has a couple unspoken conditions (probably listed out in fine print as a footnote of a footnote in the Chinese language section of your manual). For instance, since 802.11g only supports speeds up to 54Mbits, you need to have special D-Link wireless cards in order to support that full 108Mbits. Without it, you're only going to get up to 54Mbits.
Also, that 54Mbits is total throughput, not the speed of each connection. So if you're transferring from one wireless computer to another, then you're only going to get (at best) half of that speed (about 27Mbits), since it needs half the bandwidth for the transmission to the router, and the other half for the transmission to the other computer.
Finally, if you take into account this is consumer hardware and you probably don't have ideal conditions at your house, there's no reason why that won't cut the speed in half again, leaving you with about 13Mbits expected speed and 12Mbits actual speed.
All that being said, let me address your question of how to speed this up:
The first thing you should do is eliminate the second wireless leg (if it exists). Put one of your computers close to the router (or the router close to one of the computers) and connect the router to the computer via a wired Ethernet connection. That should provide a hefty boost of speed (it should nearly double).
Next, make sure you have an 802.11G card in your wireless computer. If it's 802.11B, then it will max out at 11Mbits. So getting an 802.11G network card for it will increase your speed dramatically.
Also, upgrade your firmware on your router. If there's a new firmware available, you should be able to get it from DLink's website. This might give a minor speed increase.
If you have any baby monitors, home phones, etc that are "2.4Ghz," turn them off, they can interfere with your wireless signal and slow your transfer speeds.
If you can get your speed up to 40Mbits (5 megabytes per second), then you are doing about as well as can be expected from consumer networking hardware. I doubt you'll get over about 25-30Mbits (3-4 megabytes per second), though.
On a side note, back in college we used to be able to get about 5-10 megabytes per second transfer speed by loading files on an iPod (via 400Mbit Firewire), walking down the hall, and loading them on another computer. You could probably achieve similar results with your external hard drive, as you suggested. So I'd go that route for large transfers such as this.
Good luck!
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