Wireless speed of 300Mbps

[BolshieBastard]

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Got my new Linksys WAG160Nv2 up and running. My laptop has a wireless N card in it supposedly capable of connecting at 300Mbps. Wireless connection on my router is Radio Band, 40Mhz Wide Channel, Wide Channel 9, Syandard Channel 7, 2.442 Ghz.

With this set up, I get a constant 150Mbps. If I change the Wide Channel, most give me a connection speed that varies between 150 down to 65Mbps and some inconsistency.

A couple of channels momentarily give me a connection of 300Mbps which quickly drops back to 150Mbps - 135Mbps.

Question is, is 300Mbps a myth? Anyway I can improve things to get connection up towards 300Mbps and keep it there?

Ta.

[pmeswani]

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Got my new Linksys WAG160Nv2 up and running. My laptop has a wireless N card in it supposedly capable of connecting at 300Mbps. Wireless connection on my router is Radio Band, 40Mhz Wide Channel, Wide Channel 9, Syandard Channel 7, 2.442 Ghz.

With this set up, I get a constant 150Mbps. If I change the Wide Channel, most give me a connection speed that varies between 150 down to 65Mbps and some inconsistency.

A couple of channels momentarily give me a connection of 300Mbps which quickly drops back to 150Mbps - 135Mbps.

Question is, is 300Mbps a myth? Anyway I can improve things to get connection up towards 300Mbps and keep it there?

Ta.

Have you updated the firmware on your wireless nic and your router? Also, how close to the router are you when you try and connect?

[doodab]

At least with that funky frisbee shape it should fly well when you decide to chuck it across the room

You might also want to check the wireless adapter settings on your laptop, on my one (intel 5300 based) the channel width defaults to 20Mhz

You can also try reducing or relocating any sources of interference e.g. bluetooth devices and cordless (DECT) phones etc.

Also, are there settings on the router to lock the transmission speed? You could try using those.

[BolshieBastard]

Have you updated the firmware on your wireless nic and your router? Also, how close to the router are you when you try and connect?

Yep, router firmware updated to latest which is v17. Laptop has the latest version too. Router is literally 3 feet away.

[BolshieBastard]

Whey - hey!

Turns out the laptop didnt have the latest driver installed despite vista saying it had after searching the net. Found a link on another forum to the intel site for the wireless card. Downloaded and installed the driver, rebooted and am now hitting 300Mpbs.

OK its not rock solid 300Mpbs but its more than the 150Mbps max I was getting.

[SuperZ]

I've had issues with 300Mbps using a Netgear DGN2000. I've had it over a year and during that time connecitons to it have been unstable. Sometimes the signal looks strong and it's connected at 270-300Mbps (according to what's displayed in the taskbar) yet it would have slow performance or frequent disconnections. Other times for no reason the signal would appear weak, even though I'm using USB thingy plugged into my desktop in the next room which is totally compatible (ie, Netgear wireless N). I sometimes had to reboot the thing also to get the performance back, occassionally this had to be done just after switching it on also when I found the performance really slow sometimes.

ALso, you may find like I have that if the Wireless N in the laptop or desktop does not match the Router (in my case not Netgear), then it may only reach 130Mbps or so, which apparently is still wireless N. My laptop has Intel Wireless N so doesn't work at the full speed with my Netgear Router.

Anyway, with the problems above in my first paragraph I recently changed the Router settings to be 130Mbps (max speed) only, not 300Mbps, and now the connections are 100% stable and always work at that speed and the signal is always very strong between it and both my Desktop and Laptop.

[BolshieBastard]

I've had issues with 300Mbps using a Netgear DGN2000. I've had it over a year and during that time connecitons to it have been unstable. Sometimes the signal looks strong and it's connected at 270-300Mbps (according to what's displayed in the taskbar) yet it would have slow performance or frequent disconnections. Other times for no reason the signal would appear weak, even though I'm using USB thingy plugged into my desktop in the next room which is totally compatible (ie, Netgear wireless N). I sometimes had to reboot the thing also to get the performance back, occassionally this had to be done just after switching it on also when I found the performance really slow sometimes.

ALso, you may find like I have that if the Wireless N in the laptop or desktop does not match the Router (in my case not Netgear), then it may only reach 130Mbps or so, which apparently is still wireless N. My laptop has Intel Wireless N so doesn't work at the full speed with my Netgear Router.

Anyway, with the problems above in my first paragraph I recently changed the Router settings to be 130Mbps (max speed) only, not 300Mbps, and now the connections are 100% stable and always work at that speed and the signal is always very strong between it and both my Desktop and Laptop.

My laptop has an Intel Link 5100 wireless card. If I used the search utility to update drivers, it said there was nothing available and I had the latest installed (it was v12 or something).

But I found this link Intel® Driver Update Utility which did a search and found my driver was well out of date. I downloaded the up to date driver and Im now showing a wireless speed of 300Mbps. It drops down to 150Mbps at times but, I can deffo tell the pages are loading a lot quicker.

I've installed it on my son's laptop which is the same as mine and he also has found it quicker.

Im also using a linksys router so compatibility isnt spot on. Give it a try.

[Incognito]

I downloaded the up to date driver and Im now showing a wireless speed of 300Mbps. It drops down to 150Mbps at times but, I can deffo tell the pages are loading a lot quicker.

Are you running an intranet at home or something, because if you're talking about browsing the net then I really doubt you can tell the pages are loading quicker.

Your internet browsing experience will be determined by your bottleneck, i.e. your connection to the net whether that be 8Mbps or 'super fast' 20Mbps.

Infact, even if you had the Virgin cable 50Mbps I think you still wouldn't be able to notice the difference in loading times of a typical website like the BBC.

[Spacecadet]

Another thing which makes a huge difference to web browsing is the ping times.

My 3G modem will frequently give me over 1mb speeds but the ping times will be towards 200ms.

[Incognito]

Another thing which makes a huge difference to web browsing is the ping times.

My 3G modem will frequently give me over 1mb speeds but the ping times will be towards 200ms.

Latency my good man, Latency.

Although your assertion is entirely correct. Another factor will be time of day when you're doing the test, if you're trying to access an American webpage at 17:30 US time, you're going to notice considerably more delay than if you access it at 03:00 US time.

The only time you're really going to get benefit with a wireless speed of 300Mbps over 150Mbps is if you're using it as the backbone of your home network to stream media and/or shift files about from computer to computer.