Router problem

[roys426]

Hello, i have a weird problem with my router yesterday i noticed it seemed like it was going slower then it usually does so i went and did a speed test at speedtest.net an it was way slower then what im paying for so i called my provider an they had me hook it straight to the pc an the speeds were fine, i told them i had vonage an they said it was the vonage router causing the problem an they couldnt help me with that so i said no problem id call vonage, well before i called vonage i decided to just hook the wireless router without the vonage router, still crappy speed so i went in and reset my wireless router, still no good, so my router has a switch to turn off the wireless on the back an i turned it off, now i get full speed again, turned the switch back on so my wireless stuff works crappy speed again on my pc, turned wireless back off reconnected my vonage router( it an my pc are direct connected to wireless router) still have full speed dl an ul, turn back on wireless switch everything goes crappy again. never had any problems till yesterday, havent added anything, havent dl any viruses that i know of scanned for them didnt find anything. any help would be appriciated. Its a trendnet tew 639gr router, an 50m dl/ 2m ul that goes as low as 5m dl/ 500k ul not that thats bad but it sucks when you are paying for the faster speed. Thanks Again, Roy

 

[jbo5112]

It sounds like something may be on your wi-fi eating your bandwidth. Maybe a neighbor started using it or one of your wi-fi devices has gone crazy, hogging bandwidth.

It could also be a defective router, possibly a software problem on it. I would start by making sure the router has the latest firmware. If that doesn't fix it, then try changing the wireless key and SSID. If it's still slow, then it sounds like a definite, probably unfixable router problem.

If the speed is okay at this point, you can probably change the SSID back without causing a problem, but some device could be hammering the old SSID until it hardly works. Next step is to start re-enabling your wi-fi devices for the new security key. After each device has had some time to reestablish any bogus connections it might want, check to see if your router is still at full speed.

A more advanced way to check for runaway traffic is to use some LAN monitoring software like Wireshark or Capsa Free. I don't have much experience with this type of software. Wireshark is pretty popular for LAN snooping, but I'm not sure if it does what you want easily. Capsa Free is something I just found on the internet, but it looks like it has the right features for free.

 

[roys426]

Thanks for your answer an i think it was someone mooching off me dont know how they got my access code but i just changed it and everything is fine and it shows one less connection in my list of wireless addresses anyhow thanks

 

[Emerald]

in case you are using WEP wireless mode, switch to WAP2+AES which more secure.

 

[jbo5112]

I agree that switching wireless modes is a good idea. I'm unfortunate enough that my devices are quite old and only support WEP. You will have to check what your devices support. WEP is the least secure. WPA w/ TKIP is more secure. WPA(2) w/ AES is the most secure.

I'm not sure what the maximum password length, but a shockingly good way to get a good password is to combine 4 or 5 random words. Yes, using 1 dictionary word is weak, but there are 100,000's of them. Using 4 dictionary words gives you 10^20 possibilities, and if you can easily remember a number or a capital letter in there, the possibilities grow exponentially. I must give credit to this xkcd comic for the idea.

Another security option some routers support is MAC address filtering. The MAC address is the Ethernet address of the device, and it is supposed to be unique for every single Ethernet device ever made. If you only allow your MAC addresses to connect, it becomes even more difficult to crack your Wi-Fi access. The only downside is that every new device must be registered with the router.

 

[roys426]

Best answer selected by roys426.

 

[roys426]

yep all is true i also have a couple of things that only support WEP so i am stuck using it for now but i went from 10 to 13 character code an so far so good no mysterios connects again an thanks again for the answers