Excruciatingly slow wireless connection

[DPbrad]

Hello there,

Recently, I have moved my PC from an upstairs room (Where it was on a wired connection) to my bedroom where I have no way of hooking it up to a wired connection, so instead decided to connect it wirelessly to my router. Having used my phone and laptop in my room before, the connection has always been superb (On-par with the wired connection upstairs) and reliably get 8/1mpbs, which although is not super fast, is perfectly fine for simple internet usage and the occasional download.

However, using my PC to connect to the router, I get roughly 40% signal strength (Even though the router is around 2 feet from the PC and nothing is in its way), and a very staggeringly slow 0.06/0.02mbps connection. For comparison, my laptop, which I tested by placing around 30ft from the router, gets 32% signal strength, but roughly 3/0.5mbps no problems.

I thought it must be the wireless adapter I am using, but having now tried 3 different types, and a friends adapter which works perfectly for his system, it still is very very slow indeed.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks for your help in advance. :)

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

What kind of speed do you get to other devices on the network? Going by WAN speeds shows my gigabit network getting 6Mbps, etc.

[DPbrad]

What kind of speed do you get to other devices on the network? Going by WAN speeds shows my gigabit network getting 6Mbps, etc.

There are only 3 other connected devices, 2 wirelessly (My phone and laptop, both of which average 7-8Mbps download, 1Mbps upload), and then my Xbox which is wired which Im not sure is possible to but a value on its speed, but it works very quickly and never have connection issues or anything like that.

[JJ_]

Do you have any wireless devices such as a cordless phone, keyboard/mouse set etc? If so try turning these off

[DPbrad]

Do you have any wireless devices such as a cordless phone, keyboard/mouse set etc? If so try turning these off

Ah, ok! So I disconnected my wireless mouse and my connection jumped up to around 1mbps, which is at least slightly useable now.

EDIT: OK, im pretty sure there is some interference of some sort going on then somewhere. I moved the mouse and also my phone away from my PC and my speed is now roughly 3mbps. Also, my ping has pretty much dropped to low 20's, which is good too. Thanks for the help! Its a bit weird it doesn't affect my laptop though?

[The Evil Overlord]

Sounds like you might need to do a hard reset of your router, (Some reset buttons need to be pressed for 10 secs, then re setup whatever passwords and other measures you use for wifi security)

Please note, this is simply a troubleshooting tip, I have read your post and the other replies to it)

[+BudMan MVC]

Where is your desktop, under desk? Does the wireless card your using have an antenna?

You sure your connecting to your wireless, and not the wireless across the street? I have seen it so many times!!

You say you turned off your wireless mouse and speed went up? What is around your desk and how is the card connected, is it internal without an antenna? etc. etc..

[DPbrad]

Where is your desktop, under desk? Does the wireless card your using have an antenna?

You sure your connecting to your wireless, and not the wireless across the street? I have seen it so many times!!

You say you turned off your wireless mouse and speed went up? What is around your desk and how is the card connected, is it internal without an antenna? etc. etc..

1) Yes, my PC is under a desk.

2) Nope, it is a very small USB like this:

3) Yep, I can only pick up 2 connections, one called SKYxxxxx and the other called FUNKY_ROUTER which is the name of my router (hehe).

4) The wireless mouse is an almost identical looking little USB (above) and when i removed that and turned off the mouse, I saw a marginal improvement however it quite quickly slowed back down again.

5) The usb wifi adapter is connected at the back of my PC, in a USB 3.0 slot, its not an internal PCI card or anything like that.

[+BudMan MVC]

Yeah that is not a going to have very good range - something like that. Do you have access to a usb one with antenna, etc.

When I am playing with wireless on my desktop I use a AWUS051NH 500mW

You can change out the antennas, etc.. So using the wireless card in my desktop with no antenna, etc.. I see like 2 or 3 networks, with this card plugged in I see well over 20 ;) Compatible with backtrack ;) etc.. etc..

[xendrome]

Yeah that is not a going to have very good range - something like that. Do you have access to a usb one with antenna, etc.

When I am playing with wireless on my desktop I use a AWUS051NH 500mW

You can change out the antennas, etc.. So using the wireless card in my desktop with no antenna, etc.. I see like 2 or 3 networks, with this card plugged in I see well over 20 ;) Compatible with backtrack ;) etc.. etc..

BudMan, I would point out I have the Netgear WNA1000M, which is a really small adapter like that, and I can get 40-50mbit via a Asus NT-R66U router from about 75 feet in a house. Except when the Microwave is used. Since it's 2.4GHZ only, but I have seen those no-name small USB adapters work a lot worse then the Netgear ones.

[DPbrad]

Yeah that is not a going to have very good range - something like that. Do you have access to a usb one with antenna, etc.

When I am playing with wireless on my desktop I use a AWUS051NH 500mW

You can change out the antennas, etc.. So using the wireless card in my desktop with no antenna, etc.. I see like 2 or 3 networks, with this card plugged in I see well over 20 ;) Compatible with backtrack ;) etc.. etc..

I do not. However, after hard-resetting my router around 30 minutes ago, I have noticed a substantial connection speed increase. My wired connection now averages 10mbps according to Speedtest, and now I have tried it with the wireless usb adapter, I get around 6-7mbps now.

I will just keep an eye on it for now and see how the connection goes.

EDIT: Also, this is the adapter I have.

[Silpheed2K]

Being honest, if you want something with a good solid connection over wireless, you're going to want at least a (PCI/PCI-E) card with an antenna that has MIMO in it. Those tiny USB adapters arent worth much of anything usually.

[DPbrad]

So after having hard-reset my router, my connection has been great since. The internet never 'drops' out like it used to (It hasn't dropped once since the 30th April) and my average wireless connection speed is marginally better than it was on the wired connection.