Cable Internet Speeds and Wireless.

HELP. I have Cox Highspeed cable internet with 10/2 Mbps with Powerboost.

What is 10/2Mbps does it mean... I have 10Mbps downstream and 2 Mbps upstream right?

Ok so now that that it out of the way I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 Notebook with a Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini Card (54Mbps). I have a Netgear WGR614 54Mbps Wirelss Router. So does that mean when I'm using my wireless internet I'm not getting the full benefits of my Highspeed Internet Speed's?

Because I notice when I'm connected directly to cable modem its much faster, downloads etc.

In order to reap full benefits of my internet speed what Netgear router do I need to get. I was thinking of the Netgear Rangemax Next WNR834B Router. Its speeds up to 270Mbps Complies with draft 802.11n, backwards compatible with 11b/g WiFi. So will I have to get an external card or can I still use the built in dell but I am curious the one that is built in the dell is only 54Mbps so I assume I would have to get a external card.


Will there be a huge difference in speed will it be worth it?

Thanks Everyone Sorry this stuff is just a little confusing.

 

If you are close to the router and get a good signal your router can transmit 54MB/s. Your internet is 10mbit so the router is fast enough. However if you move furter away your router signal will get weaker and slow to 11MB/s or even slower. Then your router will limit your speed.

Connecting by cable will get you better responsiveness and ping times.

 

There is always a large overhead on wireless... so 54mb/s is maybe more like 20mb/s (pulling the numbers out of air just to make a point)

In theory 54mb/s is nearly 5x more bandwidth than your isp gives you so your fine. Dont let the capitalization of the "m" fool you because IPS's and Routers ect always use the same rating (bits/second) but somtimes dont have the caps right.

My first thoughts about speed being killed going thru your router vs direct to your modem is that you need to configure your router correctly to make use of your ISP's bandwidth.

I use fiber optic with 15/2 and there are certian things that need to be tweaked in my settings vs standard broadband to get my max speed. Like MTU for example.

Try to run a speed test via your network and see what you get, then try again direct to the modem. Then try a file transfer via your network. That should give a clear picture of if the network is weak and needs fixing, or if its router settings for your isp.

 

You're actually spot-on. Many times the MTU configurations and such on wireless cards are very conservative... there are apparently programs out there that can help speed up your connection. I'm not aware of any specific ones, as Linux tends to work quite well out of the box, and that's all I really use at home.

Try plugging your laptop into the router with a wire (disable the wireless on your laptop first), see if the speeds are still lower. If so, the problem is with the router. If not, the problem is with your wireless configuration.

 

sombody had good sucsess on these forums with cablenut and some addon for it.

as far as all the info you could ever want and more dslreports.com has the most insanly knowledged forum members. When I was a regular digging for info in Fios they made my head almost explode and I consider myself very computer literate.

They also have a whole slew of tools and things there so you may find what you need to diagnose and fix the problem very easy.