Bandwidth Down on New PC

[lancekidd]

Hi,

I have an older linksys router (BEFW11S4 v.4). I have cable internet at 5 Megs Download speed and 512 upload speed. On my old Toshiba laptop that I've had for about 4 years, I could sit in my living room and any time I ran a bandwidth test online, I usually got about 4800 kb/s, consistantly. I don't know a whole lot about the wireless g,b,n, etc. My old laptop had a 802.11g/b wireless adaptor on it.

I just bought a new laptop and it has an 802.11g wireless adaptor. I can not get a consistant speed on it. It's usually pretty slow and the speed is very sporadic. I've tried changing the channel on my router between 2, 6 and 11 and it works considerably better on 11, but anytime I run a bandwidth test, I'm usually lucky if I get half of what my download speed is suspose to be, but it's not steady. As it's being tested, the speed goes up and down. The upload speed is the same as it was on the old laptop.

I don't know if any of this information will help, but I was just wandering if updating to a newer router would help my speed.

If you need any other information, I will get it for you. Thanks for your help.

 

[lancekidd]

Did I post in the wrong forum or something? If I did I will post in another. I did some searching and found that my router is wireless b, and my adaptor is 802.11g, which I guess explains why my bandwidth is not good on my new laptop. Am I correct in assuming that if I buy a wireless G router that my connection speed should improve?

I hate to sound ignorant, but I don't want to buy one if that is not the problem.

Thanks

 

[G0AOZ]

Theoretically, the laptop will run at the speed of the slowest (wireless) device which in this case would be the router. Unless you have made any changes to the router, or the cable connection has deteriorated, you should still be able to achieve the same speed as before.

Do you still have the old Toshiba to do a comparison? What happens if you run a speed check with the new laptop connected to the router by Ethernet cable?

It could be that there is an incompatibility between the old router and the new laptop. Is it running Vista? Some routers don't work well with this operating system.

Just in case anything has got partially corrupted in the router, try powering it and the cable modem completely off for two or three minutes. Then power them on and check speed.

ROGER - G0AOZ.