Trying to optimize my wireless N with a DIR-655

Hello, I'm looking to get the best speeds out of my wireless N and wondering what I should do to achieve this. Heres some info on what I've got...

Product Page: DIR-655 - Hardware Version: A4 - Firmware Version: 1.22

I've got both an intel 4965agn and a 5100agn, not sure which one to use, but I'm achieving about 5-6MBytes per second of actual transfer speed with my current setup (the 4965 is what I'm using now. the 5100 gets around the same performance).

My signal is always very high, and don't suffer from dropouts (but my system has crashed before when transferring files). My "Mbps" though is maxed at 130 (found in the wireless status of my router firmware). It's usually between 75 and 130.

So I'm asking, for my hardware, are these speeds normal? I heard people getting 300mbps and wondering why I'm not. I'm also wondering if only 4-5megabytes per second of data transfer is good or not, and what I might do to make this better. I'm sure my firmware is out of date by now, but not sure if there's a better one to replace it.

thanks!

 

The 5100 can only receive at 300Mbps not send.
Sending is at 150Mbps.

The router bases it's connection on the WLAN cards ability to send hence 150Mbps.

I got a cheap Airlink that can do 300, but I'm only getting around 270.

 

I believe the 4965agn highest speed is 130. I had a friend of mines bring over his notebook xps 1530 that had a 4965agn card and the highest it got up to was 130 on my dir-655. I ended up getting a intel 5300 for my xps 1530 and my speed is about 270 to 300.

 

hmm so if i were to a get a 5300 for like 20 bucks my wireless n speeds would double?

 

It's normal for the 4965, but 5100 could be faster.

To get speed above 130-150Mbps, first you need to enable wide 40MHz channel at your DIR-655. Then at 5100 Advanced tab settings in Device Manager, change default value of "802.11n Channel Width for band 2.4" from "20 MHz Only" to "Auto". After this it should be able to connect at least 270Mbps.

4965 is stuck at current maximum speed with DIR-655 because DIR-655 is a single 2.4GHz band wireless router and 4965 could only use wide 40MHz channel at 5GHz band.

Sure! It's a cheap upgrade. I've upgraded all the wireless cards in my laptops to 5300.

With your current DIR-655, replacing 4965 with 5300 would double the speed at both transmit and receive sides. Replacing 5100 with 5300 would double the tranmit speed only. With future 3x3 wireless N router, 5300 might boost the speed up 450Mbps.