Technician blamed router for slow speeds -Help!

I have the classic or legendary WRT54G router from Linksys, and I've had it for years.

Everything was working fine until I upgraded my internet from Cox to "Premier" level which is 20-25mb/s down. Long story short I wasn't getting these speeds from various speed test sites so I called and had a service tech come out to look at things.

He removed a splitter from the line, which improved the wired speeds to the home desktop. However, my new laptop isn't getting near the speeds the desktop is getting.

The router and laptop are in the same room, and I always have full signal strength. I've experienced drops in service, where downloads will just stall, and then kick back in. When this happens the computer never loses connection to the router. The technician said that while monitoring the connection my ping to the router would spike to 900ms, instead of the 1ms it normally received. He explained, "I don't know what it is, but something is causing interference to the router" and blames this on my slow wireless speeds.

I was all set to just go buy a new router and upgrade to Wireless N, but figured I'd post here to see if there are any suggestions to fix my problem.

Thanks!

 

Hardwire it to the router seeing as its in the same room and retest. This will rule out any interference or wireless issues.

Do a /ping -n 1000 to the router and watch the latency, if it spikes once every minute then its caused by windows doing a background wifi scan.

 

Good trouble shooting ideas. Thank you.

 

Real world usage of G-wireless... 20-25Mb/s is really pushing it. Ping times won't slow speeds, per-se, but make everything "feel" slower. Likely, if you're more than 10-15ft away from the AP/router, you're not going to see 54Mb/s. In which case, if you can afford the 20-25Mb/s plan, then by all means, a wireless N (2.4Ghz or 5Ghz) AP/router is wholeheartedly recommended. I got a cheap one for my upstairs from Wal-Mart for like 30 bucks. It's a WRT-110n, but it has gigabit ethernet, and 150Mb/s wireless N and it hasn't froze or crashed yet. And I use it regularly for RDC connections.

 

N is needed for the full 25Mbps speed. Under ideal conditions: neighbors don't have APs, no other 2.4GHz noise, low humidity (seriously), you can get 15-20Mbps with spikes to 25Mbps (wireless is half-duplex so this figure includes both download and upload bandwidth). Another problem is the maximum NAT routing speed of the WRT54GL. It's about 30Mb/s. Even if you plug in a computer this limit applies. Try to get devices rated at 300Mbps (actual throughput is 35-120). Devices rated at 150Mbps may dip to G speeds.

 

my WRT54G would only give around 20-22Mbps at the best of times, maybe 24Mbps but only for short burst.
I now have a WRT-160n using DD-WRT and even with a wireless G laptop connected at the same time, I'm close to maxing out the 100Mbps LAN link that my WHS is on. I use an Intel 4965 wifi card in my Lenovo, and am 1 floor lower from the router.

 

did you try manually changing the wireless channel? maybe some devices nearby interfere with it and slow it down...

i have Comcast Blast (16/2), but usually get 22/2 on speedtest.net using a wire...

12/2 behind a wireless G router with a PCI N card for my desktop, 15 feet away with no walls