Very slow internet

almoststew1990

almoststew1990

almoststew1990

Soldato
Joined
12 May 2011
Posts
6,297
Location
Southampton
I appreciate this could be a million things buuut...

My main PC, phone and laptop all connect to my Home Hub 3 an the internet with a "fast" connection. 10+mbps download speed (not sure what connection speed that is likely to be).

I've set up a second PC with an ASUS N10 Nano USB wifi adapter. On previous systems it'll give me 5mbps or so download speed in Steam (not sure what connection speed that would be). In my new second system I'm putting together out of S1156 parts it seems to get 30 to 300kbps in steam and browsers. It will occasionally drop internet access whilst still being 4 out of 5 bars connection to the router.

The wifi drivers are installed properly. The P55 Chipset drivers are installed properly. USB sticks send files quickly. The system only has one PCI-E graphics card and one sata port in use and 2 usb ports in use so I don't think it's running out of "internal" bandwidth.

The wifi adapter is connecting using the 2.4GHz signal from the router. The router thinks the connection is 13mbps (which it might well be and tbh if that is about 1.3-6 mbps download speed that would be fine) but perhaps there is a setting that is stopping internet access being quicker than ~300bkps?
 
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Try logging onto your router and changing the signal channel to a less used frequency.

The info to log onto router should be on the back of it.

2.4Ghz is very common, hence there can sometimes be overlaps with people living nearby.

If possible, I would recommend using 5Ghz if you have it.
 
Is the WiFi adapter at the back of the PC? Get it out and exposed!

5GHz is worse at passing through materials so if your router is walls or doors away, 2.4GHz might work better for signal strength. The max speed is irrelevant - you're sat on 11Mbps rather than the max 54Mbps anyway on 2.4GHz.

Try and keep your units clear - connection speeds are megabits per second, Mbps. File transfer speeds are Megabytes per second, MB/s. Divide megabits by 8 to get megabytes. It'll help analyse what's really going on.

Where is the PC compared to other devices you're testing? Take your phone and sit it by the PC antenna and compare speeds like that.
 
Yes it could well be needing a cable, we say this a lot because... well its true lol.

But you could also start by running speedtest and seeing what your real wireless connected download speed is.
 
Ive been messing with router settings, limiting it's channels and a b g n mode or whatever to the most compatible one I need. This didn't really work so I did a "full reset".

I was using a dirt cheap and tiny USB adapter but it has lots of space all around it. I've now dug out an old TPlink USB adapter (2.4GHz only) that has an aerial and it is much better - giving me 4mbps download speed on Steam. That's fine for my secondary pc! My main PC has a newish PCI-E card that does 5GHz too and is much faster.

I should really have thought about getting a cable installed whilst we had no floor over the summer now I think about it. I'm directly above the router too! :/
 
Or, if needed, some mesh, like the Tenda ones. Boosting signals and allowing 2 devices to be connected to it's units. Quite handy. Had to go for this after replacing carpet for hardwood, as the underfloor has a thick layer of aluminium, and the signal to first floor was poor, and for the second floor was nonexistent.
 
Powerline adapters? When i absolutely must use wireless i have found certain channels work better than others (been a while, but i had to set this manually to find the one that worked best, the auto setting was a bit hit and miss).
 
t31os said:
Powerline adapters? When i absolutely must use wireless i have found certain channels work better than others (been a while, but i had to set this manually to find the one that worked best, the auto setting was a bit hit and miss).
Click to expand...
Auto defaults to specific channels. Using a WiFi channel checker on a mobile or on a PC can really help.
 
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