D-Link Wireless Problems

[keithyboy]

I switched from an ethernet router-based connection to a wireless connection two weeks ago, and I've been having completely unreliable results so far. The wireless router is a D-Link DIR-655, and the adapter I'm using is a DIR-547, both n-spec compatible and they're meant to work great together.

I had a few problems getting the adapter to work when first setting it up, ended up having to fiddle around uninstalling the drivers & re-inserting the card physically in the computer, as windows XP was detecting the device and installing drivers for it but saying it "couldn't start" in device manager. Finally solved that though as I said and got the network up and running. I've disabled the windows Zero wireless connection setup and am using D-Link's connection manager.

Now when my computer was in the same room as the router, about 5m away, I was getting fullspeed connectivity (300mbps) & signal according to the connection manager, although I still couldn't download files as fast as through the cabled ethernet setup I previously had (I have the top end Virgin Media broadband connection). I wasn't too bothered about this, but I was also getting intermittant pauses, or what would appear to be brief drops in signal strength which would randomly happen every minute, or every 5 mins, for a few seconds then go back to normal.

Now my PC is upstairs, and the other side of the house from the router, the signal probably goes through 1-2 walls at an angle and a ceiling, yet with playing around with the aerials I can get my signal strength to average 40-50%, lowest hitting high 30's and highest going mid 60's... but the problem I have with this is it'll be 50-50% for like 20 secs then it'll drop to the 30's, my download rate on any downloads drops severely during this, and if I'm playing any games I get a lag spike. Using download managers I just can't get a constant download rate, it will be great for half a minute, then drop to like ~10k/sec, then go back up (not usually as high as at first), then drop again, and keep doing that. My pings in games are inconsistant again, will be great, then I get random lag spikes/lag outs, bad ping, then back to good again, and repeat.

Also the throughput reported on the connection manager seems to be even more random than the signal problems I'm having, it will be 100+mbps one minute then drop as low as 13mbps, and for some reason it seems to be completely unrelated to signal strength, some aerial positions will give me better throughput, but at 10% less reported signal strength, and vice versa.

Even when I SEEMED to have a connection I was happy enough to settle with (55% average signal strength and 84mbps) I was still getting the drops every 30-60secs that are so frustrating to try to download anything or play games.

I've already tried reinstalling drivers, reinstalling the card, just about every aerial position I can try, with no luck, everything i try seems to give inconsistant results so far. I've read about trying Atheros drivers, but I understand that disables the D-Link connection manager, and I'm a bit sceptical about using generic drivers when specific ones should work fine. I'm currently using the latest drivers that download from windows update (they seem to be newer than the ones on D-Link website). The router is set up for 802.11n only usage, and WPA2-only AES encryption as I read these were meant to give the best performance, channel width is set to 20/40 as i read that might help signal strength.

My computer specs are: Windows XP, Abit IC7, P4 3ghz, 2gb ddr400 ram, gf6800, 3 hdds running at ata100, onboard sound so there are no other PCI cards on the system other than the wireless adapter (although the adapter is apparently sharing IRQ requests with a USB controller). Using latest adapter drivers from windows update, and latest router firmware from D-Links website.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing the drops in connection strength, or my low throughput problem? Any help would be appreciated.

[Bobcath]

Well, I don't have much experience with 802.11n, but more than enough experience with 802.11b/g.

If you only want to reliably share a broadband connection inside your home, you should have stayed with a 802.11g device. The theoretical 54 Mbps might be slower in practice, but 15-15 Mbps is still plenty for sharing a connection and playing online games.

The 802.11n is probably meant to replace 100Mbps / 1 Gbps office connections in a single room, or in more open spaces. Having a setup like you described (client / router at 2 opposite ends of a house), is not really ideal for the N router.

Get a linksys WRT54GL, shouldn't cost more than 40 Pounds. It's been around for years now, it's the most successful piece of product linksys has ever produced. I'm sure it will do the job.

But before replacnig your existing hardware, try setting it to the slowest possible speed. You might also want to tweak beacon and other parameters, because those might also significantly influence your internet speed.

The reason it produces these highs and lows in speed is beacuse by default it's trying to send at the fastest possible speed. Then when it experiences too many failed transmission attempts due to a lower signal, it will fall back to slower connection speed, which might actually produce better results. And then back to fast mode again, etc, etc.

The signal strenght shouldn't fool you: What you see at the client end, is the signal strenght of the signal sent by the router: Rx signal. The Tx signal, the signal sent by your client device is just as important, but it's not reflected in the signal strenght you see... So even if you have 40-50% Rx signal, it doesn't mean that the router "hears" you sufficiently.

I hope this helps.