Wireless performance - simple solution

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

Our internet performance has been getting gradually worse, to the point of being abysmal. We typically use laptops (my wife has hers, and I have mine from work) and we also have a desktop that is wired to the router (not wireless). We also recently added the kids' computer to wireless, and 2 iPod Touch's (wireless).

It got so bad today that I drilled a little more into it. I could not identify any packet loss, or malware/spyware, etc. What I *did* notice is that there are a lot more wireless networks in the area than I remember (belonging to all the neighbors), and they all seemed to be on either channel 1, 6, or 11 (which is what I read in most "best practices" documents). I was using channel 11, so I changed my access point to channel 9, and the instant improvement in performance was amazing. The 'online speed tests' I ran before and after the change also show a huge improvement.

Just thought I'd share it in case others are fighting wireless performance issues.

[Peter Stahl]

John, How do you know what channel you are on? What internet provider do you have?

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

John, How do you know what channel you are on? What internet provider do you have?

Peter, you can see the channel either on your laptop or on the access point (AP) itself (you need to login to it and find the wireless configuration page). Changing the channel on the AP should automatically be recognized on your laptops (or other devices), so you won't have to manually change them.

What type of system and O/S are you running?


My provider is Comcast. One speed test I did this morning showed about 1/2 Mb download speed, which is terrible. After making this change, the same test showed about 4.5 Mb downloads.

Apparently, neighboring networks on the same channel can interfere with each other and cause a loss of performance; this makes sense and I knew about this in the past, but what I didn't know was just how many of my neighbors have put in wireless networks using the same channel....

[Chuck Wintle]

I was using channel 11, so I changed my access point to channel 9, and the instant improvement in performance was amazing. The 'online speed tests' I ran before and after the change also show a huge improvement.

Just thought I'd share it in case others are fighting wireless performance issues.
Thanks for the tip. :D

[Mitchell Andrus]

Thanks. Wouldn't have thought of that.
.

[Jim Terrill]

My apartment building is the worst for internet, I was constantly having my wireless access point disconnect itself (about every 15 minutes to every hour). I used a utility to find all the available networks within range- over 30 networks! I tried changing channel, but regardless of what channel I was on, I was still sharing it with at least 2 other access points. I ended up springing for a 802.11n access point, which has many more frequencies and have not had a single problem since then.

If your computers and your wallet can support it in a congested airspace where changing the channel does not work, consider upgrading, I was at my wits end before I did so.

[Jim Becker]

Good move, John. Channel contention can be a big issue with 802.11b/g access points in close proximity since there are so few channels available. As you noticed, that really can mess up performance or even bring your network to "unusable".

[Curt Harms]

We have a cordless phone base, wireless router and SWMBO's wireless keyboard & trackball all within a few feet of one another. They all transmit in the 2.4 ghz. band. So far no problems that I'm aware of but...... We also have 2 wireless networked printers that don't support 802.11N, only B & G so switching routers may not be an answer should we have a problem.

[Jim Becker]

Curt, unfortunately, there are only a few routers that support simultaneous use of both B/G and N (or A). It has to be effectively a dual radio AP. Those are more common in commercial offerings but not in consumer fare.

[Eric DeSilva]

...and they all seemed to be on either channel 1, 6, or 11 (which is what I read in most "best practices" documents)...

The Wi-Fi channels are on 5 MHz centers, but the actual occupied bandwidth of a Wi-Fi signal is 25 MHz. So, a signal on channel 11 actually occupies the spectrum from between 8 and 9 up way beyond 11. The reason equipment is set to channels 1, 6 or 11 is that those three channels are the only non-overlapped channels for use. If people used 2 and 7, you would only have two non-overlapped channels. Same if they tried to use 3 and 8, or 4 and 9, or 5 and 10. 1, 6 and 11 is the only configuration that gives you three channels.

The net of this is that you got lucky. For most people, using channel 9 would mean that they would have interference problems from both channel 6 users and channel 11 users. I would generally advise people to stick to 1, 6 or 11, because using deviant channels also messes up the operations of those around you--now John is precluding the use of both 6 and 11 near him, rather than just 6 or 11. There is a reason 1, 6 and 11 are engineering best practices.

[Greg Peterson]

Since Vista, and now Windows 7, implement autoscaling in the TCP stack, does the router have any impact on the packet size or does it just transfer the packets to the appropriate IP regardless of packet size?

[Bruce (Jack) Campbell]

My provider is Comcast. One speed test I did this morning showed about 1/2 Mb download speed, which is terrible. After making this change, the same test showed about 4.5 Mb downloads.

I wish I had this terrible sort of download, sometimes get up to 26k and according to a network monitor, down to 6bps. Yes, thats right 6bps.

Our location has a single (read monopoly) ISP which runs totally by satellite with a total bandwidth uploads and downloads of about 8mb/s for a community of about 2500. Our 'narrow' band costs about $60/month for 300mb plus approx 25c/mb overrun.

[Jerome Hanby]

If you can see other wireless networks, then they can see yours. I'm sure you are running encryption, but on the chance that you aren't, someone could be leeching off your bandwidth.

Also, and I haven't done any research to verify why, the information that came with my WD HD Live TV said to get the greatest possible performance, use WPA2 for encryption.

One other thing concerning wireless networks, I just switched over to a dual band wireless router with gigabit Ethernet ports for wired connections. It runs the 2.5 and 5 GHz networks at the same time. I plugged WD networked attached storage into one of the wired ports, run the WD live off the 5 GHz network and the PC that is doing my video conversion on the 2.4 GHz network. The WD served up video from the other PC and from the Network attached storage without a stammer. Something like this might help eliminate congestion in your situation. One bad note, this router has built in antennae and from the WD Live box, the 5GHz signal strength was much lower than the 2.4 GHz channel's. The distances were not that great in straight line terms, but router and WD Live were on different floors.