imported_BigPerm
Junior Member
I did a search, and no luck at Linksys', HardOCP, or these forums 🙁 I hope someone can help.
Just a quick background on myself, I've worked in IT professionally for about 10 years. Not always with networking but I know my way around relatively well. Just recently have decided to jump into a wireless connection as the need has come up for me.
On to the problem:
I've been using a run-of-the-mill home broadband router/switch by linksys for a few years (model: BEFSR41). Always been very reliable, easy to setup, use, etc. Recently I've had a need to use my notebook in my new place in various rooms, so I decided to try a wireless router.
I picked up a Linksys wireless router (model: WRT54GS) (it's the 804.11g with "speedbooster" technology using firmware version: 3.17.4). I'm usually very anal about making any changes to my system, so I do things very methodically. I decided the best way to replace this router was to first not even worry about the wireless portion of the network at first. So I essentially just replaced my old router with my new one. Just unplugged the 4 ethernet ports and plugged them all in the new router. The 4 ethernet ports go to the following:
1) Goes directly to the cable modem (plugged into the "WAN" port on the router)
2) Goes directly to my main PC
3) Goes directly to my secondary PC
4) Goes directly to my print server
Logic tells me that the network remains unchanged. All ethernet ports all plugged into a 10/100 switch/router. So I went to dslreports and ran a speed test. Download speed was 3mpbs, which is just like normal. I played around on the internet just for a bit to make sure everything was working fine, and everything seemed perfect. Things were going great so far!
Then I decide to go ahead and enable the wireless portion of the router's software. When you click on the main "Wireless" heading in the software, you end up at "Basic Wireless Settings." The main setting on that page is "Wireless Network Mode" which is essentially where you choose if you want the router to use Wireless networking (you can choose G, B, or Mixed - ie both modes) or you can choose to disable the wireless portion of the router altogether. Up to this point I had this set to "disabled" which means the wireless portion wasn't even turned on.
I then turned wireless mode on by selecting Mixed on the option menu. I wasn't concerned about security or anything at this point, so I just left everything else default. Now that wireless mode was enabled I decided to ensure my connection was still working. I surfed the internet, everything seemed fine. I then did another broadband test, and my download speed was now only ~500kbps. Less than 1/6th of the speed I had before.
I figured that something was wrong with dslreports so I decided to try to duplicate the results on another site. I hit two more broadband test sites and confirmed my suspicion. My bandwidth was cut off tremendously when wireless mode was enabled on the router. If I disabled wireless mode on the router, I instantly received all of my bandwidth back. If I enable wireless mode, down the bandwidth goes immediately. I can reproduce it every time on any broadband test site.
A few things to note:
* I started off with version 2.07.xx (something) on the router, I went to linksys' site and retrieved the latest version from them which is 3.17.4. This changed nothing regarding my problem.
* I have tried configuring my wireless network card on my laptop, but was having other issues. This introduced a lot of other factors I didn't want to deal with yet, so I've put that to the side. For this post's purposes, just know that the wireless network did seem to work, although how much bandwidth I had via wireless card is not determined yet.
* I'm using static ip's for all of my network devices that are currently plugged into the router/switch via ethernet. I'm dictating the ip address to the router, the dns/gateway, etc.
That's pretty much it, I should be able to answer any questions you guys can come up with. Any help is much appreciated!
Thank you,
Mike
Just a quick background on myself, I've worked in IT professionally for about 10 years. Not always with networking but I know my way around relatively well. Just recently have decided to jump into a wireless connection as the need has come up for me.
On to the problem:
I've been using a run-of-the-mill home broadband router/switch by linksys for a few years (model: BEFSR41). Always been very reliable, easy to setup, use, etc. Recently I've had a need to use my notebook in my new place in various rooms, so I decided to try a wireless router.
I picked up a Linksys wireless router (model: WRT54GS) (it's the 804.11g with "speedbooster" technology using firmware version: 3.17.4). I'm usually very anal about making any changes to my system, so I do things very methodically. I decided the best way to replace this router was to first not even worry about the wireless portion of the network at first. So I essentially just replaced my old router with my new one. Just unplugged the 4 ethernet ports and plugged them all in the new router. The 4 ethernet ports go to the following:
1) Goes directly to the cable modem (plugged into the "WAN" port on the router)
2) Goes directly to my main PC
3) Goes directly to my secondary PC
4) Goes directly to my print server
Logic tells me that the network remains unchanged. All ethernet ports all plugged into a 10/100 switch/router. So I went to dslreports and ran a speed test. Download speed was 3mpbs, which is just like normal. I played around on the internet just for a bit to make sure everything was working fine, and everything seemed perfect. Things were going great so far!
Then I decide to go ahead and enable the wireless portion of the router's software. When you click on the main "Wireless" heading in the software, you end up at "Basic Wireless Settings." The main setting on that page is "Wireless Network Mode" which is essentially where you choose if you want the router to use Wireless networking (you can choose G, B, or Mixed - ie both modes) or you can choose to disable the wireless portion of the router altogether. Up to this point I had this set to "disabled" which means the wireless portion wasn't even turned on.
I then turned wireless mode on by selecting Mixed on the option menu. I wasn't concerned about security or anything at this point, so I just left everything else default. Now that wireless mode was enabled I decided to ensure my connection was still working. I surfed the internet, everything seemed fine. I then did another broadband test, and my download speed was now only ~500kbps. Less than 1/6th of the speed I had before.
I figured that something was wrong with dslreports so I decided to try to duplicate the results on another site. I hit two more broadband test sites and confirmed my suspicion. My bandwidth was cut off tremendously when wireless mode was enabled on the router. If I disabled wireless mode on the router, I instantly received all of my bandwidth back. If I enable wireless mode, down the bandwidth goes immediately. I can reproduce it every time on any broadband test site.
A few things to note:
* I started off with version 2.07.xx (something) on the router, I went to linksys' site and retrieved the latest version from them which is 3.17.4. This changed nothing regarding my problem.
* I have tried configuring my wireless network card on my laptop, but was having other issues. This introduced a lot of other factors I didn't want to deal with yet, so I've put that to the side. For this post's purposes, just know that the wireless network did seem to work, although how much bandwidth I had via wireless card is not determined yet.
* I'm using static ip's for all of my network devices that are currently plugged into the router/switch via ethernet. I'm dictating the ip address to the router, the dns/gateway, etc.
That's pretty much it, I should be able to answer any questions you guys can come up with. Any help is much appreciated!
Thank you,
Mike
