Unstable Wireless Connection with my Desktop

[Luigi85]

Hi all,

So I have Verizon Fios, and most of the time, it works great. However, weather it be a software incompatibility or some sort of spatial-temporal anomaly, the wireless connection between my router and my personal desktop fluctuates widely. At times, windows shows a 5 bar connection at 56Mbps, but now for example, I keep switching between 7 Mbps, 29 Mbps, and 79 Mbps, among other speeds. Now this may seem fine since its just a fluctuation in speed, but when I am gaming or streaming content, I lose the server connection. I was just up to 130Mbps for about a minute, ooop, back down to 7 Mbps again. I just don't know where to begin with this.

Oh, almost forgot. So my set-up is I have the Verizon router in my house with the wireless antenae turned off, and I connected a Linksys 1900 AC wireless router to provide wi-fi connection. On the desktop's end I use a Linksys USB wireless adapter (I think its the AC1200 dual-band). Any thoughts on what I should do to resolve this?

 

[USAFRet]

I just don't know where to begin with this.

Tell your neighbors to turn off their WiFi, or don't let your kid/roommate/partner/neighbor use the microwave or cordless phone.

 

[LostAlone]

These issues can be really hard to clear up. Sometimes really weird and non-obvious things can mess with Wifi signal and trying to trace them to source can drive you slightly mad. It's not unheard of for wifi signals to really fall off in response to the heating turning on (cold pipes in the wall suddenly full of hot water that slightly futzes with the signal).

That said you should still do the standard range of wifi improvements - Switch to a different frequency band, check there is no unauthorized traffic on the network, stuff like that. Just look at obvious stuff and double check to be certain. Next try to get the machine and the router as physically close together as you humanly can. Like physically touching is possible. If your troubles clear up then, then it'll be pipes or cables in the wall messing with you. You can solve that by experimenting basically - Moving the computer and router a few feet either way to try and get a more If it stays the same then it's the router or adapter.

In that case, try to get a different wireless adapter (try a laptop or mobile device) and see if they experience the same problems when in the same place. If they don't then look to your router and... Well... that can be harder to solve. Try restarting it for one. I know that some routers aren't good at refreshing DHCP IP addresses at the end of leases which can lead to an intermittent connection until you reboot the router.

Good luck man. This stuff is sadly all too frequent these days. My mobile phone (which is presently about 3 feet from the router) occasionally tells me that the wireless connection is 'limited' for hours on end for no obvious reason. It just... Happens.

Edit -

If all else fails (ie if you are tempted to start knocking holes in halls to get a better signal) then I'd suggest you get yourself either a long spool of ethernet cable or some powerline adapters. The latter is what I ended up doing in my house which has spotty as hell wifi connections. Three powerlines connects my girlfriends PC upstairs and my media centre PC in the living room to the wired network and makes the wireless basically a nonissue. Expect to pay 30-40 bucks for a good set and seriously man, this is something that made me feel SO stupid for not trying earlier.

 

[Solandri]

Who else is using the wireless? The speed of the router's wifi is generally determined by the slowest device that's connected. So if someone in your house has a phone that's connected to the wifi, and they go out in the backyard to do some gardening and the router degrades the connection speed to 1 Mbps to keep the phone connected, everyone else will be connected at 1 Mbps. The fact that your connection speeds are fluctuating wildly at a stationary computer strongly suggests this is what is happening. (The other possibility is interference - not just from neighboring wifi nets as has been suggested, but also things like microwave ovens which generate considerable noise centered at 2.2 GHz.)

The more expensive routers have multiple transmitters specifically to avoid this problem. Only the one radio talking to the phone in the backyard needs to slow down its speed. The other radios stay at full speed. But this is typically limited to segregating 802.11b/g networks from n, and from ac. If you have a slow device and a fast device both connected via ac, I believe both talk to the router at the speed of the slower device (I haven't fully read up on the ac spec so don't know for sure).

However, since you have a second wifi transmitter (on the Verizon router), you can test if this is indeed the problem. Enable the wifi on the Verizon router, give it a password only you know. On your desktop, connect to the Verizon router's wifi. Use it for a few days and see if the connection speed remains stable. You'll lose access to the main router's subnet, but this should be tolerable for a few days' test.

If this is indeed the problem, I would suggest reserving the n/ac and/or 5 GHz bands for stationary or close-range devices like desktops and laptops. Use the 2.4 GHz and b/g bands for mobile devices likely to stray very far, like phones. 2.4 GHz has better range anyway.