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[DillonRobinson]

I'll try make this detailed. I've been troubleshooting for like 12 hours and am stuck.

10 months ago I lived in a house, in the basement, with the very same computer and network card I have now, with the computer in the exact same location it is now. Same ISP. Internet was very fast.

I moved to a condo for ten months, and just came back. Back in the same room with the same hardware in the same position, and the wireless router upstairs is where it's always been.

But suddenly, I now am maxing out at....~0.5-2 Mbps. It's unbearable. Gmail takes minutes to load.

I spent an hour on the phone with the ISP customer support, who essentially told me "it's not our fault, it's yours, try re-installing your network card."

So I went to Device Manager, uninstalled it, rebooted, and had it reinstall. Same speeds.

I grabbed a laptop connected to the same network, and the laptop got 33mbps.

I would say I am highly proficient in IT...I do it professionally here and there...but I am not very familiar with networking. I am up to trying any possible fixes.

For some reason, when I turn on my computer, it first tries to connect to a network called "linksys". This is a network that I have not ever connected to, and when I right-click it, I have absolutely no options to, like a normal one would show, tell it to stop connecting automatically. For some reason it takes a minute for the actual network I want to connect to to show up.

If this is relevant at all - when I lived in the condo and still got amazing download speeds, whenever I turned on my computer, I would have to manually get it to connect despite having the auto connect option checked, and it would always hang for a minute at the icon with the yellow "!" icon as if something were wrong, and then connect.

Maybe something is off with the network card itself? I changed no settings and installed absolutely nothing in between moving between my two locations.

The only possibilities are that, during  the move when I drove my computer, it got jostled around? But I wouldn't think the card is physically broken because I still can connect and slowly browse the internet. Something tells me it's a software issue....I just don't know what it is.

When I load up Speccy, my Link Speed fluctuates madly between tiny values - much different than what the task manager showed (54mbps). It will go 0bps -0 - 840bps - 14kbps - 0 - 0 - 0.

Network
   You are connected to the internet
   Connected through   D-Link DWA-525 Wireless N 150 Desktop Adapter
   IP Address   192.168.0.23
   Subnet mask   255.255.255.0
   Gateway server   192.168.0.1
   Preferred DNS server   (censored)
   Alternate DNS server   (censored)
   DHCP   Enabled
   DHCP server   192.168.0.1
   External IP Address   (censored)
   Adapter Type   IEEE 802.11 wireless
   NetBIOS over TCP/IP   Enabled via DHCP
   NETBIOS Node Type   Hybrid node
   Link Speed   0 Bps

Wi-Fi Info

Using native Wi-Fi API version   2
Available access points count   2

   Wi-Fi (censored wifi name)
      SSID   (censored wifi name)
      Frequency   2462000 kHz
      Channel Number   11
      Name   (censored wifi name)
      Signal Strength/Quality   50
      Security   Enabled
      State   The interface is connected to a network
      Dot11 Type   Infrastructure BSS network
      Network   Connectible
      Network Flags   Currently Connected to this network
      Cipher Algorithm to be used when joining this network   Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) algorithm
      Default Auth used to join this network for the first time   802.11i RSNA algorithm that uses PSK


D-Link DWA-525 Wireless N 150 Desktop Adapter
   Connection Name   Wireless Network Connection
   NetBIOS over TCPIP   Yes
   DHCP enabled   Yes

Should I post anything else of use?

It might be worth noting this is a custom built gaming PC, ~2 years old. I opened the case and looked at the card and saw no obvious damage & it's relatively clean. The light on the outward-facing side does blink - and hold - green.

Note: if I try to get Windows to diagnose my network card, it 'troubleshoots' for a second and then tells me "The Diagnostics Policy Service is not running", and that's it.

Note: Someone told me to release & renew my ip in command prompt. This did nothing as well.

[FurryNutz]

Link>Welcome!

• What Hardware version is your Main Host router? Look at sticker under router.
• Link>What Firmware version is currently loaded? Found on the routers web page under status.
• What region are you located?

What Windows platform is this installed on?
Using the latest driver for the DWA?

Wireless Configurations
Links>Wireless Installation Considerations and Managing Signal Congestion and Good Neighbour Policy

• Ensure the default (dlink) SSID name is changed. Can be anything and not something thats already in use by any neighboring WiFi routers. Ensure the DWA is connecting your routers SSID name.
• What wireless modes are you using?
• 2.4Ghz Routers only: Try single mode G or N or mixed G and N?
• Channel Width set for Auto 20/40Mhz or try 20Mhz only.
• Try setting a manual Channel to a open or unused channel. 1, 6 or 11. 11 for single mode N if the channel is clear.
• What security mode are you using? Preferred security is WPA-Personal. WPA2/AES Only. Some WiFi adapters don't support AES, so you might want to try TPIK only or Auto TPIK and AES.
• Any cordless house phones?
• Any other WiFi routers in the area? Link> Use InSSIDer to find out. How many?
• If you have any of these options, Try turning OFF or ON Short GI, WLAN Partition, HT 20/40 Co-exhistance and Extra Wireless Protection if you have it. Recommended settings are default.
• Enable WMM Enable.

Router Placement
Forum User - "Well I feel really dumb. After moving the router away from other electronic devices my speeds are back to normal. Just a heads up for anyone experiencing slow speeds, you might want to move it away from other electronics and see if that helps."
6" minimum safe distance between devices.

[DillonRobinson]

Does the wireless router firmware matter if every other computer in the house uses it wireless just fine? These are ancient laptops too.

I read that it could be the adapter itself. So, since I needed an upgrade anyway, I went to Staples and bought the DWA-566. I opened my computer, removed the old one, and installed the new one. I am now connected the same network, and getting the exact same slow speeds.

So every other laptop in the house gets fine speeds, and I just bought a new wireless adapter, and it didn't change. That rules out the adapter, hardware-wise.

So might there be something on the software level that's affecting this? One of your suggestions is the router. Is that a possibility that the router doesn't like something about my computer specifically that's unrelated to the wireless network adapter I'm using?

So the router is a D-Link DIR-615...almost ancient. I am buying a new one tomorrow and seeing if anything changes.


Edit: After installing the new adapter, I got terrible speeds, 0.6 Mbps. I changed nothing since, moved nothing, and ran it again for no real reason at all, and it gave me 12.28 mbps. While that's still not amazing, that's like 24x better than it was without me doing anything. Very odd!

[FurryNutz]

Any cordless house phones?
Any other WiFi routers in the area? Link> Use InSSIDer to find out. How many?

What are the distances between the DWA and DIR-615?

[DillonRobinson]

Thanks for the help so far - but I have just solved the problem. I just bought a new Netgear router, set it up in 5 minutes, and immediately my PC picked up a stronger signal and gave me speeds equal to what I'm paying for. It turns out it was a bad Linksys router the whole time. Or, a fine router that went bad over the last 7 years, apparently.

[FurryNutz]

Glad you got it working again with a new router.

Enjoy.