Wireless network dropping packets

Street · 21 Sep 2010 at 15:38

I've got a Vostro laptop with an Intel 5100 AGN PCIE wireless adapter in it and when ever I'm not using the ethernet port my network access starts going slowly and web pages take ages to load. I tried a ping to Google and left it going for a few minutes and it seems every 4th packet is timing out.

I've updated the drivers for my wireless card to the latest Intel ones but the same thing happened. I was about to buy a new wireless card but thought I'd try another one before I did. I dug out an older Intel card, not wireless N, stuck it in, attached it to the network and the same problem happens again! Both the antennae cables are attached properly..

Any one got any ideas on what it could be?

Thanks!

Street · 22 Sep 2010 at 16:06

Both my home and office routers are set on channels that are far away from all the other used ones in the area. Its not a signal problem with either my home or office as I've sat right next to the router and it does the same while showing full signal.

I've tried other computers with wireless and they don't suffer from any packet loss while pinging.

Street · 1 Oct 2010 at 09:39

Well it looks as though I've finally fixed it.. After a night of Googling it turns out the Intel 5100 cards are a bit crap and have loads of issues anyway. I tried it on my Linux partition and it worked fine, then a bit later I disabled my bluetooth adapter and the wireless started working properly!!!

Before..

After disabling my bluetooth adapter..

Yay!

Street · 3 Oct 2010 at 20:55

Ah the second ping was over my VPN so the latency was higher!