Linksys Router Throttling wifi speeds on some devices?

TheAshigaru

Honorable
Jan 13, 2014
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I've been having an ongoing problem with my Linksys WRT54g router. Essentially, it seems like the router arbitrarily throttles the wifi speed of two devices connected to it down to ~1Mbps. I have several other devices that work perfectly fine.

On the affected devices, I can change a setting under my Broadcom 802.11n wireless network adapter, run an Ookla speed test, and I get 14Mbps down. Then, about a minute later, I can run the test again, and the speed plummets to just below 1Mbps.

Fiddling with a setting in the network adapter, such as the IBSS Channel Number, will cause the speeds to temporarily increase again, but it only lasts for a minute or so. It almost seems like I can "fool" the router for a minute before it realizes the setting that was changed. That sounds stupid (and probably is), but I can't think of why there would be such a drastic change over a short period of time when nothing else has changed. It's also strange because there are various settings that I can alter that will all increase the speed for a very temporary period of time.

Ethernet works totally fine and I get good speeds through that. Distance from the router doesn't make a difference on the affected computers. My hobbled laptop can be sitting right next to the router on the desk, while the devices that work can be anywhere in the house and still get good speed.

The affected devices also work perfectly on many other networks that I have tested. It's only my home network that they have problems.

Any thoughts as to why this could be happening?