Wireless Network Help

Factual Questions
1

I’ve had a wireless network here at the house for ages. I’ve never had speed problems - all computers hook up at 54mbps.

I recently had to scrap my Linksys WRT54G because, presumably, it stopped letting me send email (according to all my tests). So, I got a Linksys WR310N this weekend and set it up.

The wired desktop had no problems connecting. The PC in the living room, which has a Linksys G PCI card, finally got online after some fiddling.

The laptop, which has a Microsoft G PC card, connected to the router just fine and the signal was strong, but I was only getting 2mbps. Every time I re-connected to the network and/or disabled/enabled the card, I would start off with 48mbps then the speed would drop to 36, 18, 11, 5, 2.

I tweaked my settings as per this post on the Linksys boards. I settled on WPA2 over WEP, tho (tried WEP, couldn’t get it working with all 3 machines). And I set my router to only broadcast G, not mixed. I also installed the stupid LELA app from Linksys on the desktop.

Finally I got the laptop to connect at a consistent 48 or 36 mbps, never dropping down to 2. Well that’s what it’s REPORTING. The Internet is somewhat slow (hard to tell because the laptop itself is slow as dirt) but streaming videos over the network (which is what I use the laptop for) is impossible. I am trying to stream from the wireless PC in the living room to the wireless laptop in the bedroom. Streaming videos from the living room to the wired desktop is no problem. Yes, I said my laptop is slow as dirt but for 2 years I’ve been streaming videos to it with no problems, so it’s not a speed problem on the laptop hardware.

I’m considering buying a new card for the laptop…a Linksys card. Just because. I know in the past I’ve solved problems by having all of my gear be the same brand. Then I could use the Linksys connection manager thingy, too (I had to use it on the living room PC because I couldn’t connect using the Windows manager).

Before I do that, tho, anyone have any insight or suggestions for what I can tweak to get this all going?

For the record, all of the computers have XP. The two wireless ones are SP2. I have AVG on the living room PC and Windows Firewall, but the laptop is completely unprotected.

2

What do pings to the WR310N from the laptop look like?

Hate to suggest the obvious, but have you tried taking the laptop to some other wireless network and seeing how the connection is? What happens if you try swapping the old router back in? I know, probably a pain, but you need to remove pieces from the equation to isolate the problem …

3

have you checked to make sure you have the latest drivers for the wireless card in your laptop?

4

>Finally I got the laptop to connect at a consistent 48 or 36 mbps, never dropping down to 2. Well that’s what it’s REPORTING.

Okay, lets start with this. This is a fundemantel flaw youre making here. If your wireless claims 48 mbps then thats the speed (ignoring overhead for now) between your laptop and the router. Its not the speed between you and the internet. Typically a home internet connection is somewhere around 1.5-3 mbps. Not 48.

That said, there’s no reason you cannot send email yet still get on the wireless internet. Thats an application issue not a wireless issue. So Im not even sure why you bought a new router if you have purely a email issue. Sending out is usually an smtp settings problem (blocked port 25, wrong username/pass, wrong config).

On top of that, you may also be experiencing inteference from something, hence the ramp down in speed. Are there a lot of wireless access points in your area? Do you own a cordless phone? Do your neighbors? What you can do here is swtich channels. Wifi has 3 non-overlapping channels: 1, 6, and 11. Youre router is on one of them. So if youre on 6 try 11. If the problems persist then try 1.

5

Yeah, I know I am not connecting to the internet at 36mbps. As I said in my post, I’m trying to stream videos from one wireless machine to another, over the network, which was going awfully slow for 36mbps.

As for the SMTP problem…I worked on it for about 4 hours. I happen to be the admin for the email server so I know it wasn’t the server. After all my tinkering, the only thing that allowed me to send email was disconnecting from the router and connecting directly to the modem. After that much time fiddling with the damn thing the easiest conclusion was to buy a new router. My time is worth more than the $$ it cost.

As for other questions…I don’t see any other wireless networks, never have. I did not get a chance to ping the router from the laptop. I’ve tried several different channels, no help. All the wirelsss client drivers were up to date - BUT none of them have been updated by the manufacturer for several years so I’m really wondering if that was the issue. Out of date clients.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions, all. I’ve had a hell of a week at work and haven’t had much extra time to put into this and I just want to be able to pass out in bed with some videos. I have plugged in the old router, and everything is working just dandy again. SMTP is working too - for now. If I have more problems I’m just gonna replace with the same model.

6

Linksys used to be the bomb but they have fallen behind other brands re ease of setup and performance in the last few years. Based on everything you have indicated it sounds like a flaky wireless router that needs to be replaced.