Two PC's; Same Wireless Internet Connection, Different Download Speeds

[Forrest77]

I have a two pc's connecting to the internet through a wireless router. Both computers show the same speed when tested using SpeakEasy test site. Speakeasy shows a 2mb download speed & 800kb upload speed. However when actually downloading a file from the same site but not speakeasy, the older pc has a download of 14-15kbps and the newer pc has a download of 115-130kbps. Both pc's run windows xp pro and use internet explorer 7.0. Both computers are only trying to download the file. Both computers have pretty much the same programs .
I cannot figure out why one is so much slower than the other. I have looked at the internet options and they look the same.
The only difference between the two is that the older computer is a 2.4ghz pentium with 500mb ram. The new pc is 1.6mhz duo core with 1gig ram. The older slower is using widows firewall and the new faster one is using comodo.
I have looked at windows task manager and do not see any programs hogging cpu or memory. If anyone has any good ideas of what to check next, I would sure appreciate hearing from you.
Thank you all for your time,
Todd

 

[stduc]

Slower/older network card? Different / differently configured anti-malware? i.e is one PC scanning the incoming file for virus's and the other not?

That's all I can think of.

[navy]When I married "Miss Right" I didn't realise her first name was 'always'. LOL[/navy]

 

[Infinity306]

Im betting older 1 is a 802.11g card and newer 1 is an 802.11n card. and not all wireless cards are created the same..

and could be the difference between Windows Firewall and COmodo.

500 MB ram? not 528? Processor and Memory could be playing a role..But since you mentioned wireless internet connection. I'm thinking the wireless cards are more likely the culprit..
Have you tried testing by connecting directly to the router and see if the difference is as big then? or is this not feasible due to location?

 

[BadBigBen]

There are a few things that inhibit DL speed, such as the Speed the server is feeding the file, how many connections there are at the server side, how many people are logged into the server, the hops it takes to get to you...

on the client side, it could be IPv6 interfering (turn it off if on), MTU (Max Transfer Unit) could play a role, QOS / Bandwidth reservation, the number of concurrent connections that are allowed, the wife heating up the dinner in the microwave (if you are on the 2.4 ghz band - predominate in Europe)...

check your internet connection settings per machine at Speedguide.net look under Broadband >> Broadband Tools >> TCP/IP Analyzer, that will give you some pointers, and then you can download the TCP/IP Optimizer to change those settings...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[jerichardson]

Wireless will have nothing to do with the download speed. You said your internet speed is only 2MB/s and even the ancient wireless was 11Mb/s which is faster than your internet download speed. Unless one is significantly less stable than the other the way that you receive the connection should be irrelevant. To test you could always plug the slower machine into a wired connection just to make sure you're not getting some major networking inconsistencies or packet loss.

I would say it might be something to do with the firewall differences. Just for testing purposes you could turn off windows firewall and try to download the file again. Or try another file and see if it does the same thing.

You need to start by narrowing down the problem, by only using a single file from a single server you're not getting much data to compare with. I would suggest pulling stuff from a microsoft server or another big-name server that will have higher capacity servers and you won't be as affected by higher usage by other people.

 

[cdogg]

I'm with Jerichardson on this one. It is important to realize that even at 2 Megabits-per-second download speed, it is much slower than the old Wireless B which is rated at 11 Megabits/s. Also, the speed of the PC should not be a factor here.

The different firewalls could be the cause. Completely disable it on the older one to find out. While you're at it, disable as much as you can from running in the background. Being that it is older, you probably have a lot more clutter that launches at startup.

And as the previous post says, pull files from a variety of sites and compare. You'll get more accurate results. For example, from CNET's download site, I often get different download speeds from the same computer when I restart the same download! That's an issue on the server side of course...

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[Rick998]

Don't forget that the 2 PC's are likely to have very different speeds writing to the hard disk. This difference will show as a different download speed even though it has nothing to do with the downloading.

For example, if the older PC has a heavily fragmented IDE disk with a slow 'write' speed then it's going to take longer to write the file than a new PC with a SATA disk with plenty of contiguous free space, faster spin speed, etc.

You can test and compare the write speed by using a utility available from

http://www.hdtune.com/.

You'll need the 15-day trial of HDTune Pro to test the write speed as this isn't included in the freeware HDTune (although this is also a very useful utility).

Hope this helps...

 

[cdogg]

Although Rick is right that the HDD write speed might be slower on the older computer, the speed is still going to be much faster than the download speed.

The average IDE hard drive from a few years ago would transfer anywhere between 40-45 MB/s. Even when heavily fragmented, we're still talking about any number of MB/s (megabyte per second) which is going to be a lot faster than the 2Mbps (megabit per second) internet connection. So it's questionable how much impact that would actually have.

 

[Sympology]

Actually the cards speed can have a difference.

for starter speed quoted are theoretical MAX speeds, chuck in a wall or two, a microwave oven, a cordless phone, few radiators for good fun and you'll soon find that this max is no where near obtainable.

Next once you get interference, you end up with more dropped connections and retransmits, again slowing the speed down.

First up, is one closer to the wireless klink than the other?

Is one close to above mentioned objects?

Are there any other wireless connections being detected, try a different channel

If the newer card is a "N", (or another nearby) it could be crippling the other card, change it's settings to "G". If the older pc is a "N", try changing it to a "G".

Many, many things can affect wireless speeds.



Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[cdogg]

Both computers show the same speed when tested using SpeakEasy test site

While it is true that many things can impact wireless speeds, it would be extremely odd that it only slows down when visiting certain websites. From one site, the PC sees 2Mbps and from another it only sees about 120Kbps (15KB/s). You would think the site you're visiting would have nothing to do with interference and when it decides to interfere.

There's that small chance it's coincidence, but I'm not one to make assumptions. Forrest77 could immediately jump over to the Speakeasy site and run another download test to be sure.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[Sympology]

It's also important to not rely on one test site. Some download a small (but large file size) picture, other fire lots of small tests and others do a download and upload test. This is why your speed tests can vary site to site as well.

It may be an idea to try serveral other out there.

Only the truly stupid believe they know everything.
Stu.. 2004

 

[Forrest77]

My Thanks to all of you. I am sorry that I have not return any postings but my internet was actually down for over a week and I have not had a chance to checke internet in a long while. Turns out they replaces a wireless tower and forgot to add my static ip into the system. Thanks to you all, I now have lots to look at and try. I appreciate all the reponses and will start trying solutions as soon as possible. I will post again if I find out what is causing the much slower download on the one.
As a note, firewalls are different, wireless is g on both, do not have enough cable to hard cable the slower machine to the router, no microwaves or other appliances running, the file I was downloading on both computers was the new avg 8.0 file of 45mb, the faster computer is right next to the wireless router, the other is two floors above with over 85% signal strength; no other wireless systems within 2 miles,
Thanks again,