Wireless file transfer speed SO slow...

[UglyCasanova]

I have a desktop and a laptop, both of which run Windows 7. I have a Motorola SBG6580. My desktop is plugged into it via an ethernet cable, my laptop communicates via 802.11n wifi. I have roughly 90GB worth of data that I want to transfer from my laptop to my desktop. I have the folder shared on the laptop but when I try to copy files it is SLOW. 140 - 200 kb/s -ish.

I did have the network over a homegroup, but I read elsewhere that might be where my problem is. I exited the homegroup on both computers and just have the folder shared. Any ideas?

Also, when my son and his friend play each other in Garry's Mod (the only time a game gets played over a LAN on wifi) the ping is something horrible, 400-ish.

I'm frustrated.

 

[DeathRayLoveMachine]

1) Try moving the laptop closer to the router to see what effect that has on speed. If moving a lot closer gives a huge speed increase, then you've probably got a signal problem.
2) Try other channels. If your speed and ping are as terrible as you say, chances are that there's another wifi device or something operating on that channel.
3) Homegroup settings and Windows 7 have nothing to do with it.

 

[UglyCasanova]

How do I do another channel?

 

[DeathRayLoveMachine]

1) open a web browser to 192.168.0.1 (or whatever the IP address of your router is)
2) enter your username and password, if required
3) find the settings page for wifi
4) change the wifi channel
5) click "apply"
6) wait a minute
7) reconnect your laptop
8) if it still doesn't work, repeat all previous steps for a different wifi channel until you find one that works
9) report back what happened, because literally the only reason I'm helping you is to see if I correctly guessed what your issue was

You're probably using 2.4GHz, so the channels you should try are 1, 5, 9, and possibly 11 if all of those still don't work.

 

[Fardringle]

Small correction to what DeathRayLoveMachine said: Only use channels 1, 6, or 11. The other channels all overlap those three and will generally create more interference problems.

 

[DeathRayLoveMachine]

1, 5 and 9 don't overlap. 11 overlaps with 9, but if someone is using channel 6 or 7, they'll overlap with 9 but not 11 (so he should still try 11 even if 1, 5 and 9 all don't work).

A "single-wide" wifi transmission is 20MHz, and each channel is 5Mhz (except 13 and 14, and the 5GHz spectrum, which are weird). As long as your channels are spaced by at least four, there's no overlap.

 

[Fardringle]

Channel 9 overlaps with 6 and 11. 5 overlaps (very slightly) with 1 and very significantly with 6 (the default channel for most consumer routers).

 

[DeathRayLoveMachine]

I think you know your shit and I'm not arguing with you, but I have two wifi segments on channels 9 and 13 and there's no performance impact compared to using other channels.