Wifi router trouble

Darren Wright

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Springfield, Missouri
This is probably more of a first world problem, but I've been seeing more and and more internet connection issues over the past couple of months at home. This past week it got to the point my connection up at the shop was pretty much non-working. I spent a few nights last week doing trouble shooting, changing settings, and was able to get it to work temporarily.

I finally decided that my wifi router at the house was the culprit. When I purchased it about 3 years ago, it nearly doubled my download speed, with it's large 300 MHz processor. Well over the last 3 years we've added several devices in our house that use wifi. What I finally determined after turning many of those devices off, is that the cpu was getting maxed out on the router as it was stable when only a couple were turned on and using wifi.

So late last week I ordered a new router. The new one has a 1 Ghz dual processor, quite a bit more speed than the old one, this made a huge difference. Prior we were only getting about 24 Mbps download, that speed has more than doubled my download speed, sometimes getting up to 75 Mbps download on the same cable connection/box. :eek:

I'm not posting this to brag, was just an eye opener of what adding a new device here and there was doing to my network infrastructure.
 

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My prehistoric Linksys WRT54G router finally bit the dust yesterday...been having problems losing Synergy and all connections, on & off for a week or so...gave up the router and the windows pc, and ended up using a VM inside Linux to keep using my old apps that linux wouldn't accept even using wine....the results above are from an old Slipstream 4100 modem...guess it's time to start looking for an upgrade.

Cool that you figured out the problem before throwing money at it, as so many often do...:thumb:
 
The one tech item i have sympathies with is the wireless router. We have come to think of this almost like hardwire substitute yet very few have any idea of the complexity of what its got to do in RF terms.
Its really nothing short of amazing i never ever imagined we would be able to engineer an rf transciever capable of what these devices are doing today.
I have tried to no avail to explain to my family the concept that each device divides the bandwidth available but they dont wish to hear so they think pulling power out and "resetting" will fix it (duh). Some just dont want to hear what they dont want to hear.lol.
That new router must be really great. But this issue is one of the reasons i still try hardwire my computers in my office.
I wonder how many people still have old network cards too limiting their network speed while they hooked up to high speed service providers.

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:eek:
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My prehistoric Linksys WRT54G router finally bit the dust yesterday...been having problems losing Synergy and all connections, on & off for a week or so...gave up the router and the windows pc, and ended up using a VM inside Linux to keep using my old apps that linux wouldn't accept even using wine....the results above are from an old Slipstream 4100 modem...guess it's time to start looking for an upgrade.

Cool that you figured out the problem before throwing money at it, as so many often do...:thumb:

I suprised that Linux wouldn't accept wine... I thought everyone would accept wine. :wave::wave::D:rofl:
 
That new router must be really great. But this issue is one of the reasons i still try hardwire my computers in my office.

They are incredible devices, which as I mentioned, I hadn't thought much about until needing to replace the old one. I think the stability of the device has made it possible to cut that cord, which it's funny you mention "the office", as that is becoming less and less common in the home and in businesses for that matter. What we've had as our dedicated office at home is planned to be consolidated down to a file cabinet in the closetOutside of a few paper bills I still get, most of my information is digital. I still keep bank statements coming in paper form, but all other bills I've converted to digital and store them that way. As for working, I tend to take my laptop where I feel most comfortable working rather than being confined to a single room.

I do still hard wire a few devices, such as the IP cameras and have one of the gaming systems wired in for the streaming. I tested out wired vs. wifi on the new router and speed checks came out the same, though I'll consider what I'm wiring vs. doing wifi from this point on based on what I learned.
 
Wait . . . what? Technology changes over time!?! What am I gonna do with my 3" diagonal, black and white, battery operated, 8 pound 'portable' TV???

Seriously, glad you got things up to speed (pun intended).
 
I am getting ready to pull my WRT54G. It has DD-WRT on it and still works fine, but the cable company has been calling me, telling me to upgrade my cable modem. (on my second one, first one gave me years) They are telling me that my current one is EOL and I will gain a good bit of speed with the new one (already bought when found an open box DOCIS 3.0 one). So I am upgrading the wireless since I have more then one N item, but will keep the Linksys as both a hardwired, and maybe to talk to my Raspberry PI stuff (none of it is N).

I was really tempted to build an Atom based system, running Smoothwall Linux as the firewall, but it was more cost effective when the NAT box came on sale. I tend to overbuy a bit on tech, so I get longer lifespan.
 
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