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[serco]

My problem is: I obtain a better connection with embedded G wireless card in my laptop than with my N USB stick (DWA-160) on the same laptop when I connect to my DIR-655 router.

My router is in the window of my house.  My USB Stick is plugged on the D-Link extension cable and placed in the window of my workshop.  My house and my workshop are parallel.  The distance between the 2 windows is 125 feet.

The embedded wireless G card in my computer is an Atheros 5007EG.  When I connect with this card I obtain a 54mbps connection with a very low signal (according the WinXP icon bar), but I go to web without any disconnection problem.

I turn off my Atheros card, I plug my D-Link USB stick. First of all, I need to turn on the D-Link Wireless Connection Manager and press Refresh 2 or 3 times to make sure my wireless network appear on the list.  When it finally appears it indicate I have from 32% up to 46% of signal on the channel 9 (only network on this channel in my neighbor).  It also indicates me that it sees my router is in G and N mode.

After that, it try to connect at 300 mbps, it goes down to 108 mbps, around 30 seconds later it goes
down to 40.5, after that 11, after at 5.5, finally it stay at 2 or 1 mbps with a very low signal. Effectively, my connection is extremely slow.

On speedtest.net, when my Asus is in my house wireless with the USB stick I obtain 2.86 mbps in download, in my workshop I obtain 0.23 mbps in download and 0.15 mps in upload.
On the same site with my Atheros, I obtain 0.91 mbps in download and 0.69 mbps in upload in my workshop and in my house my download speed is 4.51 mbps and upload speed is 0.60 mbps
Which hardware is the culprit?  Am I not supposed to have a better performance with N than G wireless networking?

My laptop is: Asus Eee-900 with 2 megs of ram, Intel Celeron 900Mhz CPU with latest drivers installed.  Windows XP Pro is installed in my machine.
My router: DIR-655 with firmware 1.21 and hardware revision: A3
My USB Wireless: DWA-160 (Hardware: A1) with firmware 1.07
According to the D-Link theses 2 hardwares match very well, but now I have a big doubt on that…..

SOLUTIONS ?

Serco

[lotacus]

You won't achieve 300Mbps at that distance.
Don't rely on what windows reports for a connection. Instead log into the router and in the status page go to wireless and see what it reports. Do this for both cards.

In the routers config page, go to advanced wireless and enable or disable short-gi.

When you say the router is on channel 9, did you manually assign it that channel or is channel auto scan selected? Try both ways. Always try to use a non-overlapping channel.

Disable the D-Link connection manager. Honestly (sorry dlink) 3rd party connection managers are KAKA and uneccessary. This isn't Windows 98/2000 era anymore. Arguably, Windows has a very good built in connection manager.

The connection throughput will decrease because it's detecting the best possible speed w/ minimal errors.
At 125ft, you are probably going to get that throughput. I do apologize, but I just cannot fathom 54Mbs connection on a legacy G device, so what windows is reporting is incorrect.

As well, and if you can, just for curiosity, try opening the window at both ends and see if the connection improves. Windows cause reflection/refraction, although I do believe it shouldn't be THAT horrid, but notible degridation at the distance your talking about. When i'm about 30 feet away in my room I get just little under 54Mbps sometimes worse, my situation is environmental factors and placement of the gateway, which i'm assuming is yours as well.

OH, try going into the driver settings of the dwa-160 and set it to G only and see what happens. I kid you not, I did this once in my room and notice a stable 54Mbps connection over the irratic N only mode.