[resolved] Problem with wireless card / router not giving me full internet bandwidth.

[Paul Stavanger]

I'm on a 2mbit cable internet connection from NTlL, have a linksys befw11s4 with 4 ethernet port router, and some run of the mill wireless b pci card in my computer. Anyway, my network has recently messed up for some reason, and my computer (not any of the others) is 'capped' at about 500kb/s. I have no idea why, I've reset the router and changed loads of settings but to no avail. It's completely strange because the only thing I can think of that caused it was plugging another computer into the router via a lan cable, but that has since been un plugged. It's frustrating when I have a 2m/b connection and only get a quarter of it - this is when the other 2 computers in the network are turned off as well.

Right near the end of my tether, am using am1772 wireless lan chipset drivers. I did a system restore to before the problem, and no joy there. Thing is, if it is a mechanical / hardware error, why is it capped at about 500kb? I thought at first it was possible NTL had knocked back my connection for some reason, but the other computers seem to be able to manage ok (though the other computer on wireless doesn't get fantastic transfer rates but that's got loads of crap on that sucks up it's bandwidth). Even with all the computer's on I would normally enjoy 1.3 - 1.4, which is quite important to me since I do a lot of gaming.

Would upgrading my router and pci card to wireless g be any help? And how much would it cost for one router (without modem included) and two wireless g pci cards? Because I'm not exceptionally rich and it seems a waste of money that is unlikely to solve the problem.

I hope this is the right forum, wasn't 100% sure - if it's not I apoligise in advance.

[Terrister]

Have you run a virus/spyware scan on the slow computer? Try the online scan in my sig below or another one.

[Paul Stavanger]

Originally Posted by Terrister

Have you run a virus/spyware scan on the slow computer? Try the online scan in my sig below or another one.

Yep completely clean. The other computers aren't ine, they're the families, so I don't bother with them so much but they're more or less clean, just stupid ad bars ehre and there. I keep mine as clean as a whistle though and am pretty sure the bandwidth isn't being hijacked - I have a suspicion that it is down to my wireless PCI card, I have a spare wireless transmitter that is plugged in via USB around somewhere, I'll try that and see if I can get a better speed and post back.

[Terrister]

Try going to www.dslreports.com and run the speed test from a location close to you. There is a large list of locations at the bottom.

[Paul Stavanger]

Originally Posted by Terrister

Try going to www.dslreports.com and run the speed test from a location close to you. There is a large list of locations at the bottom.

Hmm, on UK servers I can get a fast speed. Serves me right for using a firefox plug in tester. Hmmm, thanks anyway :) suppose it's not a problem with me then. Still, I get pretty high ping on BF2 :p but I guess they need to iron the bugs out.

[Terrister]

Sounds like eit. Slow internet can be a hard problem to fix. Might want to try a ping and tracert to this server rto see what's going on.

[JamesO]

What kind of ping times to you get to BF2?

Don't forget if you are in the UK and BF2 is hosted in the US, you have at least 90 ms transit time across the Atlantic, so do not be surprised if your ping response is in the area of 140 ms. Unless there is a mirrored server close to you, do not expect quicker response times.

I do not know much about BF2 so this is an assumption that they are only hosted in the US, appears to be Chicago??

JamesO

[Paul Stavanger]

Originally Posted by JamesO

What kind of ping times to you get to BF2?

Don't forget if you are in the UK and BF2 is hosted in the US, you have at least 90 ms transit time across the Atlantic, so do not be surprised if your ping response is in the area of 140 ms. Unless there is a mirrored server close to you, do not expect quicker response times.

I do not know much about BF2 so this is an assumption that they are only hosted in the US, appears to be Chicago??

JamesO

There are UK and EU servers too, and you can sort them by the response times. I get a few which are really fast (30 - 70) but they're always full, and then it climbs and climbs and on average I have a 200ms response time.

One thing I'm wondering about, is that even though I've got high bandwidth, could I have poor latency? I don't know, it just seems that I can download things at a nice speed, but on things like games where it's about speed not necessarily size, I seem to still be lagging. I'm with NTL and they're based on fibre-optic cables, which sends info at little under the speed of light, if I'm correct, whereas your old telephone lines are the bog standard electron soup push/pull?

ping www.techsupportforum.com with 32 bytes of data

packets: sent = 4, received = 4, lost = 0 (0% loss)
approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 112ms, Maximum = 114ms, Average = 113ms

Trace:

[JamesO]

Don't forget, even at the speed of light things take time.

It appears your trans Atlantic crossing from London to New York is about 60 ms, which is slightly better than average from what I have seen.

New York to Chicago transit time was about 20 ms, which is about 1/3 the distance from London to New York. About what I would expect.

Just adding this "transit" time up is 80 ms. Then deal with packet handling times within the routers and multiple network hops, add about another 30 ms on and you end up with around 110 ms. Then you have to factor in network loading, packet buffering as well as packet fill rates and then you start to have some differences and variations in the network response times.

Now if you ping or trace to www.yahoo.com or some other sites that use mirrored servers, you will probably see the ping times fairly quick. It appears that Yahoo uses Akamai, which may actually host a cached server on site probably within the NTL network. This cuts down on the number of router hops and the "transit" time half way across the globe.

Now with BF2, the problem may also be with the server speed and network connection size to the specific server. Not sure how popular these games are, but I am sure during "local" prime time hours these servers and the connections that support them are designed to only handle a specific number of players and a certain amount of traffic loading before delays/latency becomes and issues.

Even with fiber to your house, you are still at the mercy of physics, the World Wide Web traffic loading, router processing speeds and and how big and saturated communication circuits are at any given point in time.

JamesO

[Paul Stavanger]

Originally Posted by JamesO

Don't forget, even at the speed of light things take time.

It appears your trans Atlantic crossing from London to New York is about 60 ms, which is slightly better than average from what I have seen.

New York to Chicago transit time was about 20 ms, which is about 1/3 the distance from London to New York. About what I would expect.

Just adding this "transit" time up is 80 ms. Then deal with packet handling times within the routers and multiple network hops, add about another 30 ms on and you end up with around 110 ms. Then you have to factor in network loading, packet buffering as well as packet fill rates and then you start to have some differences and variations in the network response times.

Now if you ping or trace to www.yahoo.com or some other sites that use mirrored servers, you will probably see the ping times fairly quick. It appears that Yahoo uses Akamai, which may actually host a cached server on site probably within the NTL network. This cuts down on the number of router hops and the "transit" time half way across the globe.

Now with BF2, the problem may also be with the server speed and network connection size to the specific server. Not sure how popular these games are, but I am sure during "local" prime time hours these servers and the connections that support them are designed to only handle a specific number of players and a certain amount of traffic loading before delays/latency becomes and issues.

Even with fiber to your house, you are still at the mercy of physics, the World Wide Web traffic loading, router processing speeds and and how big and saturated communication circuits are at any given point in time.

JamesO

I know, it's annoying though because I can just click on any old server that comes up in counterstrike: source and I'll get a max latency of 60ms but normally around 19-30.