Router Questions - Need to Upgrade?

[PP Mguire]

Not using USB dongles. My desktop PC upstairs has a wireless NIC with a single, small antenna. The other wireless devices have built in NICs as well. PS3, iPad, and another laptop.

My PC is showing 54Mbps when I hover over the network icon but that can be misleading. I always do speed tests to be sure. My PC always said 54Mbps, even when I was getting 2Mbps download speeds.

Not sure what the latency fix is but to be honest, since I installed this new router I've had zero issues with everything. I will research it more and I still have my old router. Never know when you'll need one.

Hover over the icon? Are you using XP?

Task manager and the network adapter status tell you the real connection speed in real time. Single small antenna will be your problem with upstairs vs downstairs. Any N device with MIMO will increase your range and speed. Getting a new adapter for your PC is really cheap. My Asus dual antenna card was 20 bucks.

Wireless networking is half duplex, meaning up and down speeds are split to share bandwidth. So a 54Mb G connection has a theoretical max download speed of about 2.5MB/s, which is the max speed of a 20Mb internet connection. If your TWC is 30Mb, you aren't going to get the max download speed of your internet without going Wireless N. You have the router already so another cheap 20 dollar upgrade will greatly help your PCs wireless performance.

As to the other devices, not much you can do about those. Embedded wifi usually only has 1 antenna and N devices are limited to 65Mb with limited range. I've noticed phones lie about signal strength too.

 

[Hermanator]

Yes, Windows XP. The task manager still shows 54Mbps under networking tab. Maybe I just don't understand what you are trying to say. But honesty, it's ok. My PC is fine now and if I want to bump it up even more I can always purchase another NIC like you said.

Thanks for the comments folks!

 

[PP Mguire]

I'm guessing it's only showing the connection speed (like ethernet) instead of how fast the wifi is actually going.

 

[Hermanator]

Realistically I'm paying for a 15Mbps plan through Time Warner. Maybe you can answer this:

If I buy a router with dual band and a dual band NIC for my PC will I see much difference with a 15Mbps signal coming into my modem?

Just not sure if it's worth the extra time and money. For now it works fine but even faster would be cool. It's all about money apparently, like anything else.

 

[PP Mguire]

If you're paying for a 15Mb connection then you shouldn't have any issues running with what you have. 54g doesn't bottleneck a 15Mb internet connection.

 

[SCxnoxiousTechie]

Check if there's any firmware update..