Upgraded to high speed cable, but 2 laptops out of 4 are slower than before!!

I used to use ADSL 3mpbs internet, and recently switched to 25mbps Cable Comcast.

I've checked speedtest.net for each of our family member's laptops, and two newest laptops run at speeds of 25mbps and 15mbps.
These two computers can stream videos without buffering.

The problem is with the two old laptops. They both show speeds of 10mbps.
I think it's because of their wireless card being G instead of N.


The strange thing is, videos did not buffer and stutter when we were using ADSL before. What should we do?? We can't afford a new laptops for the other family members..

 

What may be happening is that the videos (I'm guessing netflix) are using a higher quality stream because they have more bandwidth, and the machine might just not be fast enough to play them. They were fine beforehand because they were using a stream that took less horsepower to play, because 10mbps is still 3x as fast as what you had before.

To test this, can you plug the old laptops with an ethernet cable into the router and see if they still stutter? How about transferring a file between two of the computers... is that fast and is it just the Internet that's slow?

 

It's not netflix, and it's just a streaming video of a lecture at a school. It uses windows media player plugin that's embedded into their website. The old laptop simply pauses and buffers every 5 to 10 seconds!
It didn't do this before I upgraded the internet to cable.
Here is my speed from speedtest.net while using wireless:

Now, here is my speed while on ethernet cable:

Additionally, the streaming video doesn't seem to pause at all while connected via ethernet cable instead of wireless. I'll purchase a correct answer for $20 please. Haha
I believe the answer lies in the wireless card being G. How do I upgrade my Lenovo 3000 v100 laptop's wireless card G into wireless card N?

I have a: Intel WM3945ABG MOW1


I also found an old post of yours: while searching on google

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Are you using the same wireless router that you did before with the ADSL?

But yes, I do think that it's related to the wireless G. Perhaps your router doesn't behave well in mixed-mode... could you try disabling the N capability of your router (you still can't max your internet with G speeds) and seeing if that helps?

 

well, i would need the N speed for the other laptops.
i was rather seeking to upgrade the wireless card on the old laptop? hence, providing the model number of the wireless card in the previous post, along with laptop model, which is Lenovo 3000 V100.

 

My point is that you don't need N speed for the other laptops. Wireless G speeds are still faster than your Internet connection can go, so if the router is having an issue with running in dual-mode your least expensive fix would be to just run it in G-only mode.

 

Apparently no it's not. If he's getting interference or anything that'll also kill bandwidth. Wireless G is capable of 54Mbps but it will NEVER get that, the MOST 802.11G can push is 22-25Mbps (WPA2/No Encryption). With WEP or WPA/TKIP that bandwidth can be as much as 40-60% LESS. So in his setup, his internet speed is actually more than the router can handle. This will be even worse if it's a crappy router with limited RAM and other wireless clients are actively being used (as well as wired clients).

Wireless N routers usually can do 40-80Mbps routing (WLAN to LAN) as they generally have 300-500mhz CPUs. Older 802.11G routers had a 125Mhz to 200Mhz CPUs (WRT54G v1 to V8). Switching as it's called done on the LAN of-course will always give you more performance since the switch will handle that with it's purposely built CPU. That's why these boxes are called routers with built in switches.