How to get a more consistent wireless connection?

Hey NBR members,

I've got my ASUS G73JH laptop wirelessly connected to the Internet through a Netgear WNR2000v3 2.4 GHz router. Usually, my connection speed shows up as a steady 130 mbps and my Internet is very fast. However, the connection speed will occasionally start fluctuating between 54, 78, and 117 mbps and my Internet will noticeably bog down. Usually, the happens once every week or so at night and the only way I can get my steady 130 mbps and normal speed back is if I go to the desktop that my router is connected to and change the wireless channel. This is obviously a hassle and I want to know if there is anything else I can do to maintain a good quality Internet connection at all times.

I'm suspecting that there may be wireless interference on my channel during those times that my speed goes down. I live on a street where every house has at least one wireless network and I can see 16 different ones being broadcast in Windows alone. I've tried using inSSIDer to pinpoint the problem channels but it seems that every single channel from 1-11 are being used by someone! I know that you're supposed to pick a channel that is at least 3 away from any other one being used so that they don't overlap and cause interference but this looks to be impossible in my case. So right now I'm just stuck with changing between 1, 6, and 11 whenever my connection starts faltering.

Please note that nobody is stealing my Internet and torrenting stuff as I have WPA2 encryption set up. Also, I use DECT 6.0 wireless phones and there are no interfering devices on the same floor as my computers.

 

I had the same problem as you. Now i use mostly 5ghz band and only use te 2.4ghz where i don't get a strong sinal of the 5 ghz. If you don't have a 5ghz router i dont know what to tell you.

 

5 Ghz is not a option since nothing I have supports it. Not even iPod Touch or even my new dell laptop. So everything that has Ethernet is hardwired except the Touch.

 

What wifi card do you have in your Asus?

Last week I upgraded my son's laptop from an Atheros wifi G card to an Atheros AR9280 dual band N card. I've noticed that compared to the other 2-antenna laptops in my house (2 with Intel 6200 cards and 1 with Intel 5100) the Intel units have much more variation in speed even though the Intel units are located much closer to the router. The Atheros connection so far always shows a stable 300 mbps connection whenever I've checked, while the Intel ones sometimes show wild fluctuations down as low as 54. These numbers are from casual observations and not methodological monitoring, but I strongly suspect that the Atheros card has better reception than the Intel ones.

Of course, YMMV, but the Atheros card was less than $11 shipped (from an ebay seller in Hong Kong) so you may want to give that a try. If you currently have a 2 antenna card and your machine has 3 antennas you could try a 3 antenna card and see if that makes any difference, but those would cost a bit more.

 

Mmrff, I gotta take this into consideration. I figured our current one wasn't as powerful due to where it's placed, so I have to experiment and see what I can do.. if anything, it still narrows down what the problem could be.