Slow wireless downloads

[Pghpooh]

HI
This post is long and rambles!!! LOL I was written over a two day period and then copied and pasted into this forum.

Is there a way to test my laptop to make sure it is working ok? I need to find out if the laptop is capable of actually downloading up to 15 megabit. I had thought of adding a external wireless card to the laptop and then disabling the built in wireless. But I don?t want to spend any money trying to prove my laptop is working or proving that the modem provided by Verizon is bad. Are there any wifi spots in coffee shops such as Caribou Coffee or places like Panera or Borders Books or Barnes and Noble that have wifi that will go u to 15 megabit? I don?t know anyone who has the Verizon fios around here so that easy test is ruled out!

I also posted this problem and none of the suggestions given here helped. I am at the point of wanting to make sure my laptop is on and then with that try to prove the Verizon and Actiontec stuff is bad.


A few weeks ago I had the Verizon Fios Internet Service installed in my home. The speed has been fantastic on my desktop but stinks on my laptop!!!
On my desktop I use the wired connection from the Actiontec modem/router/wireless unit. When I test download speeds I use the site provided by Verizon for FIOS speed tests. On the desktop speeds are always over 14 megabit for downloads and always 2 megabit for uploads. When I connect my laptop to the Actiontec unit with the cable and disable the wireless I get downloads of 13 megabit or higher consistently.
When I use the wireless on the laptop the upload speeds are always 2 megabit and the download speeds rarely if ever go over 7.5 megabit. I have talked to Verizon tech people and also have spend days exchanging information in the Broadband reports .com web site. There is a forum where Verizon tech people man and try to help with the problems I have done everything suggested. I manually set the channels to specific channels and ran all 12 channels. I reset the modem to factory settings. Updated the modem firmware in the modem. Made sure that the ?G? band was the only one in use. Set my laptop to match the channels on the modem,,, set the laptop to use only the ?G? band. Set the laptop built in NIC to full duplex at 100 at it was set to auto. Set other optioned to make sure the bandwidth was set at 54 megabit instead of auto?

Is there a way to test my laptop to make sure it is working ok? I need to find out if the laptop is capable of actually downloading up to 15 megabit. I had thought of adding a external wireless card to the laptop and then disabling the built in wireless. But I don?t want to spend any money trying to prove my laptop is working or proving that the modem provided by Verizon is bad. Are there any wifi spots in coffee shops such as Caribou Coffee or places like Panera or Borders Books or Barnes and Noble that have wifi that will go u to 15 megabit?
Thanks
Pghpooh

 

[Madwand1]

I suggest testing "raw" networking performance between the desktop and the laptop -- this will give you a good measure of your actual wireless performance.

E.g. using iperf version 1.7:

server: iperf -s
client: iperf -c server -l 64k -t 15 -i 3 -r

- where server is the name or IP of the remote machine -- probably your desktop, while the laptop is being used as the "client".

Here's a sample of my performance -- going across a standard-g wireless bridge (on a good day, with the microwave not running):

F:\tools\bench\iperf>iperf -c smallserver -l 64k -t 15 -i 3 -r
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to smallserver, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[608] local 192.168.0.147 port 6286 connected with 192.168.0.169 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[608] 0.0- 3.0 sec 7.00 MBytes 19.6 Mbits/sec
[608] 3.0- 6.0 sec 6.81 MBytes 19.0 Mbits/sec
[608] 6.0- 9.0 sec 6.50 MBytes 18.2 Mbits/sec
[608] 9.0-12.0 sec 6.44 MBytes 18.0 Mbits/sec
[608] 12.0-15.0 sec 6.81 MBytes 19.0 Mbits/sec
[608] 0.0-15.1 sec 33.6 MBytes 18.7 Mbits/sec
[584] local 192.168.0.147 port 5001 connected with 192.168.0.169 port 1713
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[584] 0.0- 3.0 sec 7.56 MBytes 21.1 Mbits/sec
[584] 3.0- 6.0 sec 7.75 MBytes 21.7 Mbits/sec
[584] 6.0- 9.0 sec 7.69 MBytes 21.5 Mbits/sec
[584] 9.0-12.0 sec 7.56 MBytes 21.1 Mbits/sec
[584] 12.0-15.0 sec 7.69 MBytes 21.5 Mbits/sec
[584] 0.0-15.0 sec 38.4 MBytes 21.4 Mbits/sec

 

[Pghpooh]

HI
I downloaded the iperf software and installed it on my laptop.
Needless to say I am a dummy when it comes to using tools like this.
I found the address of my desktop pc and my laptop and put those in the ipef. Aftet that I am confused.
Can you give me a little help and or give me the numbers to use and the commands???? As I said before I am lost!!!!
Thanks
Pghpooh

 

[JackMDS]

May be this can Help., http://www.citynet.net/iperf/iperfXP.pdf

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Pghpooh
Can you give me a little help and or give me the numbers to use and the commands????

It's not too hard. You need to install or copy it to the desktop as well. From there, open up a command prompt, and run:

iperf -s

This starts up iperf in server or listener mode. If you get any prompts from a firewall, allow it through.

Leaving that running, go to the laptop and run the command previously given:

iperf -c desktop -l 64k -t 15 -i 3 -r

Again, allow this through the firewall if prompted.

This will send to the desktop's iperf for 15s, reporting performance very 3s, and then do the same from the desktop to the laptop.

Note that this tests local wireless performance, which can vary due to a number of factors. This first gives you a tool to see if your local wireless performance is sub-par or not (max standard-g is around 23 Mb/s). Once you have performance measurement working, you can tweak it further by changing wireless channels, positioning, limiting interference (shutting off the microwave, cordless phones, etc.), messing around with the antennae, etc.

If you have good local wireless performance but poor download performance, there are other options to try.

 

[drebo]

Wireless Ethernet is by design a half-duplex connection. As a result, when your access point/NIC advertise 54 Mbit bandwidth, you're actually going to get closer to 27 Mbit Maximum Bandwidth. And that's under the absolute best conditions. Likely, under normal conditions, you'll see closer to 10-15 Mbit. Latency should be good, but throughput is pretty bad by design.

 

[Pghpooh]

HI
Madwand1
I think I got it now or am getting close!
Thanks for that last post!!!
Here is my last test.
Are these results ok?
Gonna go back and read some more
Pghpooh

C:\>Iperf 192.168.1.3: f -c 192.168.1.2 -l 64k -t 15 -i 3 -r
Iperf: ignoring extra argument -- 192.168.1.3:
Iperf: ignoring extra argument -- f
------------------------------------------------------------
Server listening on TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 8.00 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 192.168.1.2, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 128 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[128] local 192.168.1.3 port 50024 connected with 192.168.1.2 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[128] 0.0- 3.0 sec 7.81 MBytes 21.8 Mbits/sec
[128] 3.0- 6.0 sec 8.00 MBytes 22.4 Mbits/sec
[128] 6.0- 9.0 sec 8.00 MBytes 22.4 Mbits/sec
[128] 9.0-12.0 sec 8.00 MBytes 22.4 Mbits/sec
[128] 12.0-15.0 sec 7.81 MBytes 21.8 Mbits/sec
[128] 0.0-15.0 sec 39.7 MBytes 22.2 Mbits/sec
[140] local 192.168.1.3 port 5001 connected with 192.168.1.2 port 1118
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[140] 0.0- 3.0 sec 5.44 MBytes 15.2 Mbits/sec
[140] 0.0- 3.0 sec 46.1 Mbits 15.2 Mbits/sec

 

[Madwand1]

There are a couple quirks in the command and the results, but otherwise the results are pretty good -- the transmission rates are nearly perfect, and the receiving rates, 15 Mb/s, isn't bad for standard-g. However, your nominal Internet speed is this high, so there's a good chance that receive performance will be somewhat impacted by your wireless performance.

Which OS are you using on the laptop? Have you run any networking tweaks on it?

If it's XP or W2K (i.e. not Vista), I suggest setting the following TCP/IP tweak and retesting the Internet performance using wireless:

http://www.talkbroadband.com/a...ing-your-TcpWindowSize

There is no single best setting, which is why it's configurable, and there are different values suggested for it on the 'net (and why Vista gets rid of it and does automatic tuning). Try the suggested value to start (reboot after setting it and then re-test Internet performance). You can try even larger values to see if that gets you over the hurdle. You can undo this tweaking by deleting that particular setting (only). Reboots are needed after any changes for the setting to take effect.

Caution is advised when doing registry tweaks. Export the registry before making any changes for a backup in case you slip up.

 

[Pghpooh]

HI
Madwand1 Thanks for hanging in there with your advice!!!


My laptop is running Windows Vista Home Premium. I have all the latest updates from Microsoft for Vista.
The wireless card was preinstalled on the laptop and is made by Broadcom. I have updated the wireless driver to the latest from the HP website.
The network controller card is built in and when I look at the device manager it says the network controller card is made by Nvidia. I am 90% positive that I have the latest driver for that installed. One thing is when working with the Verizon tech support they told me to set the network card to FULL DUPLEX/100. Originally it was set to AUTO.

The only network tweak I ran on the laptop is one suggested by Verizon on their FIOS web site. It?s called FIOS Speed Optimizer http://www2.verizon.net/help/fios_settings/optimizer/ According to the info on the web site it can be rolled back to the original settings. The site also gives instructions on how to install it on Vista which I did.

When I run the speed tests I use this site provided by Verizon for their FIOS.
http://www2.verizon.net/micro/speedtest/java/
I have used this all times of the day,, even 3 am and the download speeds to the laptop are very bad as mentioned in my first post here.

If I make any changes to the registry I will back it uo and create a restore point. That way if I mess up I can go back!!!
Gonna take a day away from the pc and shovel snow on Tuesday and enjoy the grandkids!!!
Madwand1 Once again,,, THANKS!!!
Pghpooh

 

[Madwand1]

As you have Vista, that registry tweak is not applicable to your system.

I don't like the FIOS forced 100 setting, and don't entirely like their tweak tool either (it disabled jumbo frames for local gigabit here), but they're easy to roll back and not likely to be doing any harm at this time to you.

I don't have any other suggestions in mind at this time (other than sticking with wired!), so will just have to wish you luck elsewhere. Maybe one of the grandkids will figure it out / obviate it at some point..

 

[RadiclDreamer]

www.dumeter.com is a nice tool for measuring speed as well. Free trial