Why is my network SOOO SLLLLLLOOW?!?!?!?

[burmaz]

I had a wifi card in my tablet pc that would not get even close to the 11mbps max of wifi. Even though the signal was 100% it would get 2mbps tansmission speed max. So then i switched to a 100mbps wired network card and now my max is only 9mbps. What is wrong?!?! This is so annoying. Could it be my Linksys wifi/wired router?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Do you have WEP configured for the wireless? 802.11b hardly ever comes close to the 11Mbps theoretical; setting up WEP slows it down even more, and higher WEP bit settings (64bit, 128bit, et cetera) results in even slower user throughput (the encrypted data takes up more bandwidth than the actual data). 2Mbps does seem a bit slow though even with only 64bit WEP, but might be perfectly normal if you use higher than that.

Also, the Linksys may simply have a slow processor, or your wireless card may have slow decryption or encryption; since with WEP enabled, the devices have to encrypt and decrypt all the data (so the router can pass it to the unencrypted LAN ports). A slower processor results in lower throughput.

If you disable the wireless entirely in the router while testing the wired throughput, you may notice a difference. Even if you don't have any wireless clients, the router may be performing the encryption.

What are you transferring to or from in both situations? Do you get these speed limits when both uploading a file and downloading one? Was the wired card actually working at 100Mbps? What brand of wired and wireless cards are they?

 

[burmaz]

No WEP is used for wireless. My router wont even let me change my settings for some reason. So maybe it is using encryption. The wired network card is set to 100mbps and is a Linksys. Thw wifi card is some generic pos.

 

[Lord Evermore]

By default no current wireless devices enable WEP (since it requires that you input an encryption key), so if you didn't turn it on, you're not using WEP. Changing settings in the router's configuration would be unrelated to that anyway.

Your wireless card may be to blame for the low wireless performance. You didn't mention what you were transferring to/from to test things.

 

[burmaz]

Im doing a simple file copy between two computers. The file is a 1.6 gig video in Mpeg-2 format. My desktop PC has a Athlon 2400+ and the tablet pc only has a p233MMX w/ 96 meg of ram and a 5400rpm laptop hard drive. The tablet is running win 98 and the desktop is win xp. My transfer speed is also slow for wired connections. I have a 16 bit pcmcia network card that is not card bus. i doubt that would make a diffrence.

 

[spidey07]

a p233MMX w/ 96 meg of ram and a 5400rpm laptop hard drive. The tablet is running win 98 and the desktop is win xp. My transfer speed is also slow for wired connections. I have a 16 bit pcmcia network card that is not card bus. i doubt that would make a diffrence

Theres the problem right there. The 233 is really very slow and would have a hard time doing much more than 5-10 megabits/sec. The 16 bit pc-card is also a bottleneck by today's standards.

 

[RustyNale]

What the above guys said is right on, one other thing to check is the firmware version of your router. Upgrading to the latest version may help, plus it fixes a security hole in the linksys's programing. A friend has cable, and was getting max through put, put a linksys on, and it dropped his speed by at least a 1/5 of his max. Did the firmware upgrade and now's he back to his max.