Slow Wireless Connectivity

I'm having some strange connectivity problems and am at a loss - here's the story.

I cannot connect to my wireless router at anything better than about 150Kb/s. I have a Dell Inspiron 600m, about a year old, and it's got the b/g internal wireless. I just got my third wireless router in the past month, the first two being netgear wgr614v4, this one a D-link DI-524. When I'm connected through ethernet, it's fine. When I connect to other wireless networks elsewhere (not in my house) I get all kinds of speed. I tried a friend's computer and we had the same problem.

Which leads me to believe there must be some sort of interference, but I can't figure it out. Last year I had an older netgear access point and it connected at the max speed of my then dsl line. I have a cox cable modem now. I also don't have any phone or other electronics to create interference. I've tried switching channels to no avail.

Any ideas?

Have you tried changing the location of the access point in your house? If it is located near a large metal object that could interfere with radio wave propagation.

You can test for signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) using Netstumbler, which should give you some idea about whether interference is a problem.

When you say you've tried switching channels, did you switch from 11 to 10, or did you switch from 11 to 1? If you are receiving interference from other wireless access points, then you have to move several channels in order to avoid it. Depending on the source of the interference, changing channels might not make a difference.

If you are getting interference on all channels with 802.11b/g, you could switch to 802.11a, which operates in the 5GHz band, far from the spectrum occupied by 802.11b/g.

HTH,

Zac
 

I had this same problem. This worked for me

Go into the Router Set-up screen (192.168.1.1) and enable "MTU" and set the value to "1492".

My download speed went from 150 kbs to 2000 kbs.

Hope this works for you.

I had the IDENTICAL problem. Apparantly, it is widespread! I finally found a post on the 6th page of my search that yielded the results. Try logging into your router (http://192.168.0.1) and go to wireless settings. Change the channel from 11 to 6. I have not been kicked off since I changed the channel. God bless you!