WiFi: Have excellent signal strength but low speed

I have recently purchased a Dell E1705 with the T2300 Duo-Core and 2 GB RAM @ 667Hz (after market). It's got the Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN mini-card to connect with my home network. I use a Linksys WRT54G router that has HyperWRT firmware installed - I have never messed with any of the advanced features however; up until maybe now...I've never needed them.

My problem is this: the notebook, which is only 10 feet away from the router (located on the first floor away from any other electronics), has excellent signal strength but less-than-stellar speed. It seems anything less than 54.0 Mbps causes web pages and downloads to load very slowly.

My desktop is located on the second story of my house (~50 ft from the router), it also has excellent signal strength but the speed never drops below the upper limit of 54 Mbps.

I've had the notebook for almost a week but the speed thing has only become a problem in the last day or two since a router move. Because I wanted to ensure good connectivity I moved the router from the second floor to the first floor (which is where I primarily use the notebook). Is it possible that moving the router closer to the notebook would compromise speed? Doesn't make much sense to me.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to get my speed, as measured by the wireless network utility, to stay pegged at 54 Mbps? The slow webpage loading is unbearable - we're talking old dial-up wait times.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

hmm...type in the IP address of your router into your web browser which should open a configuration manager, well it does for my Belkin router...? From there you can figure around with speed settings. I'm not quite sure, but make sure your web browser has complete access to the internet. Make sure it's not blocked by a firewall or anything. I've also heard somewhere that the further away from the router you are WITHIN the signal reach area, teh faster wireless connection you will get.

 

Lil Mayz,

Thanks for the reply. I did not mess with my router settings b/c the connection with my desktop is perfect. I did, however, move the laptop further away from the router and the speeds seem much better - at least webpages are loading much, much faster. I'm actually using my notebook to type this reply...

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

You may want to go over to broadbandreports.com, click the Tools tab, and run the Speed and Tweak tests there. (The speed test won't test your LAN speed, only your internet connection, but the suggestions from the Tweak test may help your LAN as well.)

Also remember, 54Mb/s is a theoretical maximum, very rarely will you come close to that. If you get 80-90% of that, you're cooking with gas.

 

Could it be coincidence that the pages are loading faster when you move away from the router? What if you take the laptop to where the desktop is, how does it load pages?

 

I believe the slow transfer speed is due to your notebook wireless receiver being saturated by an overly strong signal at close range (seems a common problem with pre-N mimo wireless routers).

Just installed a new Linksys WAG354G gateway plus Linksys 7db high gain whip antenna. This combination knocked the ADSL speed for six on my wife's Acer Aspire when used at close range (6 feet). Removing the whip attenna or tilting it away from the notebook (towards my Linksys wireless print server on the ground floor) brought the connection speed back to normal.

Regards