PP Mguire
Build Guru
- Messages
- 32,592
- Location
- Fort Worth, Texas
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.