Home internet hardships

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xev
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Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 9:47 pm
Location: New York

Home internet hardships

Post by xev » Fri Apr 08, 2016 1:27 pm

I have cable internet from time warner at 50dn/5 up. Things run fine on my main hardwired pc but whenever i connect another few devices on wifi, it terribly slow. Speedtest still tests fine, but real life speed just loading a page. Especially when connected to my work VPN from a laptop, its just impossible- like those dialup days with pages loading in bars.

The wireless router is a netgear n300 and i think i have it set up fine. Would adding an old Linksys G possibly help?

washu
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Re: Home internet hardships

Post by washu » Fri Apr 08, 2016 5:48 pm

First off, your work VPN. Does it route everything or just the subnets required?. Many VPNs route everything so you are at the mercy of whatever connection speed they offer. If you don't know, google "what is my IP" first with the VPN off then with it connected. If the IP changes then it is very likely that your work VPN routes everything.

For wireless, a "netgear n300" router could mean many things. Does your router support 5 GHz? If you can try using 5 GHz as it is often less congested. Try seeing what channels are in use by your neighbors. For 2.4 GHz try switching between channels 1, 6 & 11. Do not use any other channel as they will overlap two others. Even if your connection is clear, do your clients support mult-stream wireless N? Many N devices only support 150 Mbit link speed, which will give 50 Mbit or less real world.

A linksys g router will only make things worse. G wireless cannot do more than about 20 Mbit real world, and even wired those old linksys routers were only good for about 30 Mbit without a lot of tweaking.

xan_user
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Re: Home internet hardships

Post by xan_user » Fri Apr 08, 2016 6:33 pm

regular consumer wifi suckx ass. and to make things worse, AFAIK a 300n is not real dual band. non dual bands only work well with one wifi device of each frequency at a time.
Id get a ubiquiti air router HP and/or a directional nanostation 2.4 and make sure you are not on the same channel as your neighbors. if you want 5g and 2.4 for multiple devices at the same time, make sure you get a real dual band unit.
while its true, 2.4 is congested.... it sometimes still performs better than 5ghz, because 5 is basically useless though walls that are any beefier than standard, un-insulated 2x4 /sheet rock construction.

CA_Steve
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Re: Home internet hardships

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Apr 08, 2016 8:22 pm

Probably want to sort out whether it's your wired access or your wireless access that's the problem, first.

What happens when you connect your work laptop (or any of the other devices) to another of the router's LAN ports? Similar performance to your main PC? Or, still degraded? If the latter, then it's not your wireless...

If performance is similar, then look to your wireless side for issues. Grab an app like Wifi Analyzer for your phone. See if there's other routers using the same channels as yours. If so, change your channels. See if the problem goes away.

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