Frustrated with Routers

[JIMV]

I have an ostensibly 50mpbs internet connection. Product hard wired to my Router show an actual speed of over 40mpbs...BUT, all my wireless devices see a speed of 20mpbs of less, often a lot less.

I bought a Linsky 3200 series router. It's specs speak of up to 300 + 300 Mbps so I figured it would be a transparent pass through for my internet signal...nope, still getting under 20mpbs at the devices. In fact, there is no change at all from the speed delivered by my old N series router...

OK, it then develops a password problem and refuses to work at all so to the trash it goes. I replace it with a E2500 unit, supposedly less capable but with identical speed specs...And again no change at all at any of my devices...

So mt question (complaint)...where do these folk get off promising speeds up to 300 mpbs when all they ever deliver is half what my internet provider provides???

Let me be clear before folk blame my wireless devices...I get identical wireless speed delivered on a 4 year old Sony laptop, a 4 month old Toshiba i3 laptop and a 3 month old Toshiba i5 laptop...less than 20mpbs...

My wife's 3 year old Asus Netbook (latest firmware and 2GB or RAM) gets a whopping 4mpbs on a good day, my Droid III phone a bit more and a new Android tablet running gingerbread a bit more than 8mpbs...As I type my droid III is getting 7.3mpbs and this i3 PC 13.91mpbs...(with an 802.11n...capable of 54mpbs)

Also to be clear, there is never more than two wireless devices operating at the same time...

So, how is advertising high speed routers NOT delivering even the 6 times slower speed I get from my ISP NOT fraud??

Let me cut the the chase...does anyone make a 'high speed router' that actually delivers a wireless high speed signal?

 

[9to5cynic]

Okay, so 802.11 is a *shared* medium. So if you're getting speeds of 54Mbps, you may actually be getting much lower (20Mbps). Now, if you have five clients, that could be only 4Mbps per device.

A lot of things go into the throughput for 802.11 as well, frequency bandwidth, modulation, encoding, encryption.... and it is important to note that frequency bandwidth is *not* data bandwidth.

I hope that helps,
9to5

 

[rui-no-onna]

So mt question (complaint)...where do these folk get off promising speeds up to 300 mpbs when all they ever deliver is half what my internet provider provides???

Those are probably lab tested speeds in ideal conditions - no interference from the microwave oven, cordless phone, walls, the neighbors' wifi, etc.

 

[JIMV]

Which means they lied...Ok, does anyone not lie?

 

[XplosiV]

These are theoretical maximum throughput speeds.

Although wifi speeds do increase as the standards get newer (a/b/g/n) don't hope to get 50mb through wifi. Through hardwired connection yes, but not wifi.

The keywords here, are "maximum theoretical"

Just be happy you're getting the 20mb through the wifi.

 

[JIMV]

Then they should not advertise speeds never reached...It is like a 27 in TV pretending to be a 42...IF the screen was larger.

 

[XplosiV]

It's kind of like speakers... Never judge speakers by the peak wattage, as that figure only needs to be obtained for a fraction of a second, but it can still be obtained. Where as the RMS wattage is a sustained wattage and can be easily held.

If you really want or need high speed transfer rates, use a setup that uses ssd's with gbit ethernet ports and cat 5e or cat 6 cabling to reach the hardware potential.

 

[Rukbat]

A Porsche can do upward of 200mph, so how come when there's a traffic jam on the interstate mine can't go through it at 200mph? That's what you're asking.

Your "internet connection" - actually the speed of the data you're downloading from some server out there in the world - can't go any faster that the slowest part of the link between the server and your computer. The part of the path from the router to your computer is probably going at 300mbps, or whatever it's rated at, but the packets are only coming along every second or so, so the time to download a 300mb file is a lot longer than 1 second. When you measure your download speed, it's the average speed (just like your speed to grandma's house isn't the same as the peak of 95mph you attained for 5 seconds) of the entire download over the entire path. Copying a file from another computer connected to the same router will be a lot faster. (Although probably slower than your router's maximum rated speed, because your computer probably can't write the file to the hard drive that fast.)

But that's why your speed from speedtest.net (which is close to your provider's server, so the path is pretty fast) is faster than your download from some 600MHz server at the end of a noisy copper line in Outer NoDataStan. And until Internet 2.0 is open to the public (maybe in 5-10 years), there's nothing we can do except download from servers that are close to us.

 

[andr01d]

@JIMV, maybe try these router and laptop settings if you get a chance...
(some notes are on the attached pictures).

This is typical network type and bandwidth setting. Any router will do but this is what i have...

The security type must be set to WPA2 for max bandwidth...

This is the Device Manager - Network adapter settings...

From the tray (lower right of screen), left-click on the network icon, and then right click on Status on your current network/SSID...

Good luck!

 

[scythefwd]

There are several things that limit your bandwidth.

You're distance from the router.. the further you go.. the slower you get.
Are you conecting at N, B, or G speeds?
Is you're router setup for N only?
What other wireless devices do you have that can create noise in the part of the spectrum you are using? (Cordless phone, microwave, etc.)
Are there a lot of other wireless routers in you're area? If so, they can actually be slowing your connection down due to interference.

Yes, that router can do 300 mbps if it isn't getting much interference... in an apartment type situation, or a urban situtation where people are living very close... not as likely.

How are you testing your bandwith to the phone?

 

[JIMV]

A Porsche can do upward of 200mph, so how come when there's a traffic jam on the interstate mine can't go through it at 200mph? That's what you're asking.

No, I am saying that the Porsche CAN do 200mph but my router cannot under any consumer event pass through a signal rated as 1/6 their claimed rate. I am saying the 20 year old nag is not Sea Biscuit and never was despite putting a 100 anorexic on the beast in full jockey regalia.

Your "internet connection" - actually the speed of the data you're downloading from some server out there in the world - can't go any faster that the slowest part of the link between the server and your computer. The part of the path from the router to your computer is probably going at 300mbps, or whatever it's rated at, but the packets are only coming along every second or so, so the time to download a 300mb file is a lot longer than 1 second. When you measure your download speed, it's the average speed (just like your speed to grandma's house isn't the same as the peak of 95mph you attained for 5 seconds) of the entire download over the entire path. Copying a file from another computer connected to the same router will be a lot faster. (Although probably slower than your router's maximum rated speed, because your computer probably can't write the file to the hard drive that fast.)

Would you buy a car or let a car advertise 200 mpg if all it gets owned by a consumer is 18mpg and the 200mpg only applies if the car was on a 200 mile long slope in a windless environment?

But that's why your speed from speedtest.net (which is close to your provider's server, so the path is pretty fast) is faster than your download from some 600MHz server at the end of a noisy copper line in Outer NoDataStan. And until Internet 2.0 is open to the public (maybe in 5-10 years), there's nothing we can do except download from servers that are close to us.

Still, does not answer my question...Does anyone make a wireless router that actually delivers high speed internet? As near as I can tell, the answer is no...Getting high speed from your service provider is sort of useless if the wireless router will only deliver at 1/5 that speed.

 

[XplosiV]

Again, it depends on your setup.

My router has 4 gibt ethernet ports and i use cat6 shielded cabling, and is wifi N.

Wifi speeds will always be slower than hardwired ethernet.

However, even through wifi I can download at 5MB on my 50MB line through wifi, and frequently do.

Make sure your not getting confused with mbit/s and MB/s

So does anyone make a high speed router, yes. Does anyone make a high speed wifi router, yes.

I suggest you read here WiFi Speeds vs Real-World Throughput | WiFi How To

300mb advertised routers will deliver easily upto 12MB transfer rates considering 15-16MB is about the maximum you'll ever see. Just remember they advertise in mbit not MB so don't expext to get 300MB from wifi.

Also remember that your provider most likely advertise in MB not mbit. So your 50MB line will be 500mbit and at full speed will download at upto 6MB/s

 

[scythefwd]

Still, does not answer my question...Does anyone make a wireless router that actually delivers high speed internet? As near as I can tell, the answer is no...Getting high speed from your service provider is sort of useless if the wireless router will only deliver at 1/5 that speed.

The router has NOTHING to do with the speed of your net connection and everything to do with the speed of the connections to the devices that are using it.

You might not see 300 mbps, but that doesn't mean it isn't attainable in the real world. Getting a 300 mbps router isn't going to magically upgrade your uplink to 300 mbps. If your bandwidth to you're house is only giving you 20 mbps, that's all you're ever going to get, period.

How are you testing your bandwidth? Without knowing that, you're numbers aren't exactly useful. Are you testing to a site internal to your own wireless network (the only way to determine the real world bandwidth available to you from the router) or are you checking to a server not local to you (which is testing your connection uplink.. not your router), or are you just looking at the connected at xx speed on your phone (which could be a limit in the implimentation of the phone and may not actually be the routers fault at all).

You bought a router that can handle 300 mbps connections to it... but have you made sure you are setup for that, your environment will even allow for you to reach that? Point blank, I'm not sure you know what you are testing or even what you really bought. Did you think that getting an upgrade from a router that does 54mbps to one that does 300 mbps would actually change your connection throughput to the rest of the world? Dont blame the router because you don't know how it works. Dont blame the router until you can prove it isn't behaving as it is designed, which so far as I have read in this thread, you haven't even attempted to prove. All I'm seeing is "My router says it will do a 300mbps connection, but I'm only seeing 12 meg" 12 meg to where?

 

[JIMV]

It is like the rest of audio....the quality of sound is as good as the poorest device in the music chain. If I have a router that is 6 times faster than the signal I am receiving from my ISP, and every single receiver at the other end of the wireless network can receive a signal faster than the ISP provides, why should I see half the speed of a hard wired service or less, often much less?

Just because your speedometer says 120 on your Yugo does not mean the thing will do 120. The difference is, the Yugo was not sold as capable of doing 120 and the router is touted as capable of doing many times more than it really delivers...

 

[Demache]

It is like the rest of audio....the quality of sound is as good as the poorest device in the music chain. If I have a router that is 6 times faster than the signal I am receiving from my ISP, and every single receiver at the other end of the wireless network can receive a signal faster than the ISP provides, why should I see half the speed of a hard wired service or less, often much less?

Just because your speedometer says 120 on your Yugo does not mean the thing will do 120. The difference is, the Yugo was not sold as capable of doing 120 and the router is touted as capable of doing many times more than it really delivers...

They say up to. Up to is the key word there. Its not false advertising if its a theoretical maximum. Just like how many SATA drives have 3 Gb/s speed. However they will never get that high, because of the mechanical limitations of the drive.

 

[scythefwd]

Jimv - because, simply put, you don't get as much data per packet via wireless as you do for the same size pack on wired. There is more encapsulation, encryption, and network identifiers on a wifi packet than there is on a hard connection. You're hard connection will be much less succeptable to interferance than a broadcast transmission.

You generally have a max window size of 1500 bits or bytes (don't remember off the top of my head). Besides data, a wired network link will have IP information (source and destination), MAC addresses (destination), sequencing information, protocol information, port (both source and destination). A wifi has that as well as encryption (you really aren't running unencrypted are you?), SSID, and authentication per packet as well. You are going to run slower on a wifi.

You still havent told us how you are getting your numbers though. You say you are connecting at 1/2 the speed, but we still dont know where you are getting that number. Your computer is quite probably connecting at 1 gig. How many WIFI networks are available to you when you go to connect to the system? 1, 2, 15? Each one of those is using channels on the available spectrum. If they are using the same channels you are using... hello interferance. Are you connecting through a wall that also has a bit of power through it? Interferance. Are you running a wireless phone in the house? May or may not be causeing interferance. I used to watch my speed drop when I turned on an old TV...

Just because your speedometer says 120 on your Yugo does not mean the thing will do 120. The difference is, the Yugo was not sold as capable of doing 120 and the router is touted as capable of doing many times more than it really delivers...

The router isn't advertized as doing 300 meg in any and all environments. Pull it out to my house.. It's in caroline County, VA.. and I bet I can show you a 300 mbps connection to a compatible device.

 

[JIMV]

They say up to. Up to is the key word there. Its not false advertising if its a theoretical maximum. Just like how many SATA drives have 3 Gb/s speed. However they will never get that high, because of the mechanical limitations of the drive.

Hence my question...if the norm is to lie about specs, is there a brand/device that lies less???

 

[scythefwd]

Jim. Get over it. They did not lie. You have yet to present any meaningful responses to our inqueries. Nor have you given any Information as your operating environment. I am a system engineer, and have been employed as a network engineer...i really can assist.... But if you insist on "they lie" and refusing to answer the questions asked...ill continue to call you on it. You have yet to provide any proof you are not at fault or that your router is at fault despite repeated requests for info. Basically, what it llike like is that you dontknow what you are talking about, and you dont know how wireless routers work so you blame your hardware instead of owning up to your ignorance. Either put some info so we can help, admit your expecitations arent in line with reality, or can it.

 

[STL_Sean]

best of luck,
~Sean

 

[JIMV]

Jim. Get over it. They did not lie. You have yet to present any meaningful responses to our inqueries. Nor have you given any Information as your operating environment. I am a system engineer, and have been employed as a network engineer...i really can assist.... But if you insist on "they lie" and refusing to answer the questions asked...ill continue to call you on it. You have yet to provide any proof you are not at fault or that your router is at fault despite repeated requests for info. Basically, what it llike like is that you dontknow what you are talking about, and you dont know how wireless routers work so you blame your hardware instead of owning up to your ignorance. Either put some info so we can help, admit your expecitations arent in line with reality, or can it.

The questions that you are asking are all related to the old high tech 'its the users fault' if the gear bought simply does not work as advertised..We have all seen examples. The customer service that is only available via E-mail and takes days to tell you it is your fault their item smoked before you even got it out of the box. The company (HP) that recommended to you a wireless printer that they now claim was never wireless even after it worked wireless for 3 months before failing. The PC that blue screened and had to be returned to the factory 3 times in 6 monnths but that all was well and a replacement was not warranted, even after the fire. (last two actual customer service events in my family, both HP)

My expectation of a 300 mpbs router is that it will delver at least 1/6 of its rated performance. I know, a wild expectation.

I agree, I do not understand wireless routers. I do understand published specs...the ubiquitous use of the caveat 'up to' is not a get out of jail free card for the folk making the claims.

I have used a E4200, E3200 and E2500 router and each and every one has failed to produce speeds greater than 1/2 what the ISP provides. If a 'high speed' router is not high speed, is that the users fault?

 

[9to5cynic]

By up to 300MBps, they are saying that the rate that wireless can travel in todays world (with 802.11n) is 300. If you are getting a pipe of 50, then all traffic outbound will have that limit.

If you have low overhead on the medium, your wireless device a should be able to get to wireless device b with a rate of much closer to 300. Because in that case, the traffic is not being limited by your ISP connection.

All outbound traffic will be less than 50.

1/2 of ISP advertised speed isn't bad for wireless.

--

With wireless a lot more things need to be considered. First, we are using radio waves. That means there could be countless things causing interference. If your microwave kicks on, all 2.4GHz traffic could die.

Also, there are two different layers that the traffic can fail at, layer one (physical) and layer two (data link). This doesn't mean much to most people. But, with the layer two, if the sending device doesn't receive an acknowledgement from the receiving device, it will re do the whole packet. And when this is happening, the other devices need to wait.

Now, of course, this is all happening insanely fast, so you don't really notice it. And, as mentioned, there is a lot of extra stuff thrown in with wireless that wired doesn't have to deal with.

Just remember it could be worse, I'm sitting here on a 26.4K line.

-

regards
9to5

 

[scythefwd]

Jim, I repeat my question, where are you getting that speed to? How are you measuring your speed? Are you taking that measurement on the phone? Where are you seeing that speed to (router??? how are you testing that, speedtest.net? - thats not texting your connection to the router, local network? - have you verified that system is up to the task?) How are you measuring this speed (app, connection stats)? what app are using to check your speeds? (aka, how are you verifying your findings) How close are you to the router when you test? How many wireless networks does both your phone and your router see?

Every one of these are relevant question. How are you testing this? Answer these and well be able to troubleshoot. Refuse to answer...and yours not trying to fix it...youre just complaining.

The fact that multiple devices are having the issue indicates that it's not a router issue but an environment issue. It could be a router configuration, but you haven't posted that so we cannot assume it's right. I won't assume its right to be honest.. I've seen seasoned networking people screw them up.

Here is the reasoning for the questions...

1st. Speed is very distance sensitive. The further you are, the slower you'll connect. Transmit power on the router is only part of the equation, there is also transmit power on the phone to take into account. Connect a PC up to the router wirelessly (using a N nic) to verify. If the PC is connecting faster, it very well could be the gain in your antenna setup, or the transmit power on the phone that is causing the problem.

2nd. Wireless frequencies are very succeptable to RF interference. ANY length of wire, that has current passing through it is actually transmitting RF interference. Yup, the power cables in your walls are doing it... in the same room, next to the router (and I mean no less than 3 ft away) you shouldn't be affected too much.. go further away, and the more RF between you and the router. More specifically, the transmitter is further away from the reciever and is less capable of overpowering the transient RF interferance bouncing around your house. Your cabled connection is using CAT 5, CAT 5e, or CAT 6. They twisted the little conductors in the cable around each other to minimize the effects of this RF interference... and it works very well.. unfortunately.. your wifi can't do that. This is also why it matters how many networks you can see.. they are even more interference. That said, you should be able to see a 54 mbps in the next room. If not, there is something afoot.. Either you have an excess of networks in your area (cant blame the router for that), your phones antenna/transmit power isn't up to it (cant blame the router for that either.. both the phone and the router agree on what speed you can get.. it's not one sided), or the router really is busted.

Another question.. whats the fastest network connection you have seen with that phone? How many networks could you see on it then (and remember.. there can be networks that aren't broadcasting their ssid.. so this isn't anywhere accurate for the total number of networks, but it gives you a minimum)?

Here is some starter reading material for you.

802.11n Speed - How Can I Get an 802.11n Wi-Fi Speed Rating of 300 Mbps?

And as to your comment about it being the consumer.. I've been in this business over a decade.. and to be 100% honest, it was %75 + user error when something didn't work. I would walk over to the customers desk and it worked for me, using their accounts (meaning only thing different was the way I did it). On most programs, it was usually a misconfiguration. I'm not asking these questions for my health.. I'm doing it to see if I can actually give you some clues on how to fix the issues.

 

[DaSchmarotzer]

Guys, please try to keep the conversation civil and respectful.

 

[mplevy]

I suggest you read 802.11n Speed - How Can I Get an 802.11n Wi-Fi Speed Rating of 300 Mbps?
It talks about channel bonding to achieve the full throughput from the 300 mb/s advertising.

 

[JIMV]

Jim, I repeat my question, where are you getting that speed to? How are you measuring your speed? Are you taking that measurement on the phone? Where are you seeing that speed to (router??? how are you testing that, speedtest.net? - thats not texting your connection to the router, local network? - have you verified that system is up to the task?) How are you measuring this speed (app, connection stats)? what app are using to check your speeds? (aka, how are you verifying your findings) How close are you to the router when you test? How many wireless networks does both your phone and your router see?

My ISP has a speed test and I also use Speedtest.net. I get marginally different readings from each source but they are close. If I measure my signal at my hard wired PC, I get very close to what is advertised by the ISP (most of the time). If I measure at my laptop 40 feet away, I get half the speed the hard wired PC gets. My spouses netbook gets perhaps 1/10 the speed the wired unit gets and her tablet gets about 1/4...My Android phone, as measured by my speedtest app, runs between 7-9mpbs, which is pretty good for a phone.

There are a host of other networks seen but none are located closer than 50ft.

The router configuration is as recommended in a previous post.

In addition, no more than 2 devices are connected wireless at any one time including my phone which I limit WiFi access with to preserve battery.

In my experience, when an error is made by the user, it is more often compounded by the manufacturers service or customer support. HP, in my experience, makes 'Peggy' in the commercials seem both competent and helpful.