Is my router shot?

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guinness1983

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I've recently switched to a 30Mb/s plan but my asus wl530g router only gives out around 2.5Mb/s to 3.8Mb/s to the two computers wirelessly connected to it according to the tests i've done on the speedtest website.

I've tested it with my laptop right next to it to rule out distance being the cause of the low signal and I've also changed the channels it uses. Physically connecting my laptop to the router using a cable doesn't improve speeds either. I've also tried turning off the router firewall and disabling encryption but it hasn't made any difference.

When I tried connecting the laptop directly to the modem, the results i get are around 28Mb/s which are pretty close to the 30Mb/s advertised by the service provider and significantly higher than the speeds i get when using my router.
 
Just checking here, you sure the speedtest site wasn't reporting your speed in MB/s as opposed to Mb/s? If you're on a 30Mb/s plan then 2.5-3.8MB/s is about right
 
I'm pretty sure it's Mb/s. Anyway I've just updated my router firmware and it seems to have helped. I'm now getting readings of around 10Mb/s using wifi and 20Mb/s connecting my laptop to the router. The readings are pretty consistent with all three computers I am connected on via wifi.

Now, I'd like to know if 10Mb/s out of 30Mb/s is a good enough speed to have over wifi or if there's any tweaks I can do to improve the speed to get it closer to the 30Mb/s available. I know that speeds are expected to be slower over wifi compared to a direct, physical connection but I didn't expect the difference to be this big.
 
If you're running anything less than an 802.11n network, then yes you'd theoretically have a bottleneck going on. I'm gonna assume you're running 802.11g, if that's the case then your average throughput (assuming you're pretty close to the router with excellent signal strength) is still going to be under 30Mbps because of loss and overheads. If you're running an .11n network and getting those speeds, then you've still got some issues IMO
 
Thanks. It is an old b/g router which has been set to run on g. Signal shown on all computers is strong, even the one in my room which is 10 feet away from the router, separated by a wall.

Test results so far have been consistent around 10Mb/s but the room computer, for some reason has dropped to 5Mb/s.

Are these results the best I can expect wirelessly, would I get better results from a newer wifi router?
 
Well g networks run at a max of 54Mbps, but real world scenarios you're probably only looking at less than half that (possibly even slower). So yes in this case I'd say you'd benefit from buying a newer n capable router, which are rated at a max of 600Mbps. The same limitations as other wireless networks of course means you'll never actually get this speed, but speeds of over 100Mbps should be doable, meaning your 30Mbps connection shouldn't be bottlenecked by it at all
 
Thanks. I was wondering if you could help me with another problem. I recently tried running Utorrent after the touter firmware update and for the first few minutes it was running ok but then my wifi connection was dropped. The network was still visible just disconnected and would not reconnect until after I closed the program. Since then, i have tried to access my router through the same computer but it only starts to load the page then the router is disconnected just like when i run the torrent progam.
 
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