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[tipoo]

Over the last few weeks, I've been getting really slow wireless speeds no matter where I am in my house, what channel, how little interference or how strong signal. Wireless constantly connects at 1-2Mb/s (dell wireless card utility, plus speedtest.net). On a wired connection (either to the router or modem) I constantly hit my ISP's full speeds. I had been getting full wireless speeds before then, I didn't change anything. On three different laptops its the same case, so its not the wireless card's fault. And more recently, its been kicking connections every few minutes in addition to the slow speeds, and sometimes not loading pages at all. I've tried a factory restart, hard resets, power cycled everything in the network, and I've fiddled with every setting in the firmware.

Using Wireless N, WPA2 AES, latest firmware, Motorola Surboard 5101 standalone modem, Eastlink cable ISP, tried all channels (no significant interference on any), tried disabling firewalls/security, our phones are all 6GHz.

Any ideas?
If it turns out to be a hardware problem, how does the RMA process work? Do I have to send in the old one before they send a new? I don't want to be stuck without wireless for that long.

Thanks.

[FurryNutz]

What ISP service do you have? Cable or DSL?
What ISP modem do you have? Stand alone or built in router?
What frequency are you using for N mode? 2.4 or 5Ghz? 6Ghz phones are close enough to 5Ghz it might cause issues.

Are there other Wifi in the area? Any other cordless house phones near by?

It seems that the router is probably working and has been working however something has changed in your area that could be effecting it. Speed testing over WiFi is not a stable solution and not accurate as wired. There are many factors and variables that contribute to this. Signal quality, distances, modes of operations and external and internal interferences.

I would try this, Set for Single mode G at 2.4Ghz and turn off ALL wireless devices accept for one. Test for a while. Bring on the next device and graduate them. See how this works out. Find anything, then you have a lead to something. Try this at N mode at 5Ghz and see what happens.

I might try InSSIDer application and see whos all near by and there channels. Try and see if you can find a channel that isn't being used. Some say 1,6 and 11 are used mostly, some say try 11 and work your way down.

Let us know how it goes.

[tipoo]

The answers to your first set of questions are in the OP, and its a 2.4GHz router. And like I said, wired speeds are perfect (hit my ISP's advertised speeds regularly, usually 15-20Mb/s). Thanks, I'll try your suggestion.

[FurryNutz]

Ok, there are some 615's with 5Ghz I think. Was not sure.
What HW version is your router?

[tipoo]

Its C1.

[tipoo]

Ok, I tried what you said last night and it was still slow. But its been being good (near full speed) today from morning till about 8PM, now its back to connecting at 1-2Mbps, but goes up to full speed intermittently. No differences in interference, which I'm monitoring with Dell's wireless card utility...I don't get this.

Again, I've verified its not the ISP, since wired speeds are always ~20Mb/s. And again, location doesn't seem to matter, I can be ten feet from the router with clear line of sight, and still get 1-2, or be on a different floor in a corner and get 20 sometimes.

[Hard Harry]

Have you tried connecting to someone elses network? Could be the configuration of your wireless adapter, or something in your IP stack.

[tipoo]

Other networks are fine on my laptop.

Not sure if this is related but whether I set the router to get time from an NTP server or copy my computers time, it shows the wrong time after a while.

[Hard Harry]

Actually, that is indeed a could be a sign of a issue with the firmware. When it looses time, is it random? Or specific? Like is it a watch with a dying battery? Slowly slowing down? Or is it accurate except a hour off, then two hours, then 3..etc. Or does it speed up, then slow down, then speed up, etc.  The former is probably a bug tied to the chipset, since it uses that to keep time. The second could be a issue with NTP or a daylight savings issue. The third could be a issue with the interface between the firmware and what you see when using the gateway. 2 and 3 wouldn't effect connectivity, but the first issue would.

Some other questions:

1. What does your connection rate say it is? (Was that 1-2Mb or was that speedtest?)
2. Do you have any file sharing you can test with? Comparing PC to PC in LAN vs PC to Server through WAN could isolate where the problem is.

Also try these things.

3. In Advanced > Advanced Wireless, try turning off Short GI.
4. Test for a day, or as long as it takes for the symptom to return. Then try enabling Extra Wireless Protection.

Remember, you can't always see interference. Sometimes it doesn't effect signal strength, just signal quality. And just because you cant see a SSID, doesn't mean its there. Many people will hide them as a security feature.

[FurryNutz]

You can set the routers NTP server to time.nist.gov and see if it keeps track of the time. Can do this with the PCs aswell.

What kinds of security SW do you have installed on the PC? ie, anti virus and firwalls?

[tipoo]

The wireless link speed itself slows down to 1-2Mb/s in Dell Wireless Card Utility, which in turn causes speedtest to reflect that.

The time...I don't know. Yesterday it was off by random amounts (I know I had the right time zone) when I set it to time-b.nist.gov, today I disabled that and disabled daylight savings and its reporting the right time right now...I'll keep checking to see if that stays. Maybe it gets messed up whenever I power cycle it?

I'll try your other suggestions, thanks.

One other thing, yesterday the wireless connection kept losing internet connectivity, and the troubleshooter in Windows said that the DNS provider wasn't working? I set it to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for Google Public DNS and I haven't had problems since, but I haven't tested for long. And I'm not sure why that would be related to wireless speed.

[FurryNutz]

Can you switch from the Dell utility to Windows Wireless Utility and see if there is any difference?

Possible that your ISP DNS is not stable. It's preferred to use ISP DNS however in cases like this, using others can help out.

Keep us posted.

[tipoo]

No difference.


The router has been fairly consistently good in the last two days, still with some slowdowns to crippling speeds every now and again though. Also, the time has been staying right. Maybe the time issue was the problem all along?

Also I just remembered the only change to our network was a new Android phone (Incredible 2/S) recently, I need to test this more extensively but the slowdowns might be whenever its connected. I'll look into that.

[FurryNutz]

Ok, keep us posted. For the phones, see if you can turn off the Native data connection, i.e. 3G network. Saw someone post that if you turn this off and just use the WiFi on the phone, sometimes that works. Not sure though. Keep us posted.

[tipoo]

Its still behaving well, has been for three days now...Wireless link speed is still jumpy, but stays above 13 and is usually 52-104Mbps, and speedtest is hitting my ISP max of 20 consistently. Youtube's speed test (right click on any video and click speed test) graph has gone up closer to my ISP average too in the last few days, still not at the top but getting there. So it could have been the time thing, or maybe this is one of technologies mysteries that we just have to accept and move on 

I'll keep you posted if anything changes though, thank you for all your help!