Is my network adapter slow? Or my computer?

[antlee912]

Hello, i recently built a computer which will mostly be used for gaming. I had some questions about connecting to the wifi as a direct connection is not an option. I purchased a Netgear N600 WiFi USB Adapter and tried it out and it seems to be very slow. I did a Speedtest on it and it downloads at about 1~2 mbps whereas my Surface Pro 2 downloads at speeds of about 30 mbps. I would greatly appreciate it if you guys can help me resolve this problem. thanks!

 

[hang-the-9]

How far from the router is the computer, and what is in between them?

 

[g90814]

Welcome to the world of wifi. Just about anything can cause interference, placment, obstacles, channel interference, or murphy's laws.

If you are going to be gaming, I'd suggest looking at powerline adapters. Better than wifi, not quite as good as directly wired.

Basic set:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704164

With wifi access point:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704197

 

[JimF_35]

Try changing your Wireless Channel to 9 or 4. Something other than 1,6 or 12 because these channels have the most interference.

 

[g90814]

Try changing your Wireless Channel to 9 or 4. Something other than 1,6 or 12 because these channels have the most interference.

Please research your advice a bit more, otherwise you'd know that channels 1, 6, 11 are the only ones you should use for 2.4Ghz. Otherwise you have channel overlap which leads to interference (assuming you have any nearby networks).

 

[JimF_35]

Channels 1 and 11 (sometimes 12 and 13) are at the ends of the band and have the weakest signal. Channel 6 is the default channel used by every WiFi router as a default because it is in the middle of the band. This is why you should not use these channels. Trust me I use to work for 2Wire and have fixed many of WiFi problems by switching to channel 9. If it works use it.

Yes overlapping can cause problems but using the same channel causes even more. If your neighbors are using Channel 6 then you want to not use that channel. The problems with 1 and 11 is that FCC requires that they use lower power so that they don't bleed into other bands but yes they would be better if it was not for the lower power. If you have a WAP that has the same transmitting power on these channels then use them other wise I would steer clear of them, Check out this post.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/21132/change-your-wi-fi-router-channel-to-optimize-your-wireless-signal/

So yes you are right but personal experience tells me that if you switch to channel 9 it sometimes fixes the problem of packet loss do to bad communication with the router. Now we don't even know if this is the problem yet because the op has not told us what the packet loss is yet. If it is zero then there might be other problems like viruses.

 

[hang-the-9]

Try changing your Wireless Channel to 9 or 4. Something other than 1,6 or 12 because these channels have the most interference.

Please research your advice a bit more, otherwise you'd know that channels 1, 6, 11 are the only ones you should use for 2.4Ghz. Otherwise you have channel overlap which leads to interference (assuming you have any nearby networks).

This really depends on the situation. I've spent a lot of time setting up wireless networks in CVS stores, we had to use quite a few channel settings from store to store to prevent interference to the wireless scanners we were implementing. It was not always the same 3 that fixed things when we had issues with the signal strength or scanner cutting out.

 

[antlee912]

Hi guys, i want to thank you all for your suggestions and i truly appreciate your advice. After testing out a direct connection to the router i was still given the same download speed and so i looked to see if there were any applications that were interfering and/or regulating the signal and it turned out to be that "ASRock XFast LAN Utility" was the program that was messing with the signal. After an uninstall of that and a restart the internet started running at normal speeds. Thanks again guys!

 

[hang-the-9]

Hi guys, i want to thank you all for your suggestions and i truly appreciate your advice. After testing out a direct connection to the router i was still given the same download speed and so i looked to see if there were any applications that were interfering and/or regulating the signal and it turned out to be that "ASRock XFast LAN Utility" was the program that was messing with the signal. After an uninstall of that and a restart the internet started running at normal speeds. Thanks again guys!

That's another time where a 3rd party utility caused slow speeds, I've seen posts where AMD had some network utility that was messing with the speeds also. Nice work fixing it!