Wireless connection speed problems

MothballsWallet

Just yesterday, I started having problems with the WiFi connection between my laptop and my Netgear DG834Gv3. The speed has been dropping from 54Mbps to the following speeds: 48, 36 and 24Mbps. The speed does come back after the connection resets itself.

I had V4.01.37 firmware on the router up until yesterday, when I upgraded it to V4.01.40 firmware. Luckily, I've been able to connect my laptop using the network cable.

My laptop uses a Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN adapter, with a driver dated 21/03/2008. I'm going to check the system with the HP system check tool, and see if there are any more recent drivers for it as well on Broadcom's site.

I'm going to check my desktop system's connection because it uses a Netgear WiFi USB adapter to see if it works OK - if it does, then it's probably my laptop's adapter.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

espresso

What wireless channels are in use in your locality? What wireless channel are you using? Have you tried using a different channel?

Conor_3

MothballsWallet wrote: »

Just yesterday, I started having problems with the WiFi connection between my laptop and my Netgear DG834Gv3.

So lets see what's changed....

I had V4.01.37 firmware on the router up until yesterday, when I upgraded it to V4.01.40 firmware.

Aha.

I'm going to check my desktop system's connection because it uses a Netgear WiFi USB adapter to see if it works OK - if it does, then it's probably my laptop's adapter.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Yep...the firmware in the DG834. Downgrade it back to .37. Netgear have been known to release newer firmware which breaks things. On my DG834GT if I went higher than version .12, I couldn't log into Hotmail, Messenger or internet banking. Even version .14 which was released to fix the bugs in .13 didn't solve that. Downgrade back to .12 and it all worked fine.

Why did you upgrade the firmware? Did it add extra functionality you wanted to use or fix a bug you were having? They're the only two reasons to ever upgrade firmware. Looking at the release notes for the firmware, it looks like it fixes stuff most people will never have an issue with whilst introducing a bug that anyone using AOL9 will suffer. Version .37 had a lot of worthwhile fixes including newer DSL modem drivers so was worth doing but ver .40 isn't.

MothballsWallet

espresso: my WiFi network is set up to use channel 11. There are some other wireless networks in my area, and they could also be using channel 11, so I'll try another channel.

The thing is, this router has worked well for over a year and has only shown a problem at the weekend. Also, it used to sit on a table, which I have moved out of the room in order to clean, and now sits on the floor.

Because of the layout of my living room, the router sits in front of a radiator (not right in front of it, but a few inches away), and I was wondering if that could affect it, or whether it is an environmental issue?

Conor: it started doing this when I had the 4.01.37 firmware on it as well.

Update: a similar problem appears with the desktop, which uses a USB stick adapter, but it didn't appear to suffer the problem to the same extent as the laptop, but I will have to rerun this test again.

ETA: I've changed the WiFi channel to 10 from 11, rebooted the laptop, and it appears to be working. It still drops from 54 to 48 Mbps from time to time, but returns to 54 Mbps fairly quickly. So, so far, so good: all I have to do now is to make the change on my desktop system to use channel 10.

So, many thanks, guys - things seem to be OK so far.

MothballsWallet

2nd update:

Ok, I've changed the WiFi channel from 11 to 10, and everything seems to be working at the moment. There are still drops from 54 Mbps to 48 Mbps, but the connection returns to 54 Mbps again fairly quickly.

All I have to do now is to change my desktop's settings to use channel 10, and it should work as well.

Many thanks for the tips, guys - I'll try downgrading the firmware if I get any more problems.