Why is my wireless sooooooo slow??

I've been on BT Broadband Option 3 now for about 3 months. There's a desktop, two laptops and an iphone connected to the Homehub (v2) via a wireless network (they're obviously not all connected at once!).

Anyway, over the past few days, the connection has deteriorated so much. I first noticed when trying to surf the net on my iphone the other day, whilst the WiFi signal bar usually shows full strengh (3 bars), it had dropped to 1 bar and it was impossible to surf the net.

Anway, its not improved over the last few days so I'm sat here tonight trying to work it out. I've just ran a speedtest over the WiFi network and got a speed of 1.2mb. Immediately after, I connected to the Homehub via an ethernet cable and re-ran the test and got 3.4mb, browsing's back to normal.

I'm not sure if its relevant, but I turned my PS3 on last night and that wouldn't connect wirelessly as it said there was a DNS error. Also, under "Network" on my Vista laptop, its now showing 2 Homehubs both with different icons.

Can anyone shed any light on what the issue might be? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Possibly someone nearby has a homehub on the same channel. Try switching channel.

In reply to a post by Backpack:

Possibly someone nearby has a homehub on the same channel. Try switching channel.

That's unlikely unless the other user was using their hub at full capacity 24/7. A more probable cause would be a faulty hub, or an illegal high-power video sender.

I would agree with Backpack
We use to have wireless problems. like yours where at times the connection was ok than other times it would be very unsatisfactory. In our case the only channel where the connection works great is channel 2.
We have tried various routers over the years and its always the same. Try the different channels until you come across one that's ok.

If only one wi-fi device could occupy a wi-fi channel at a time, then public wi-fi hotspots wouldn't work, or wi-fi in internet cafes, or in hotels. They do, because wi-fi is a time-shared system. Very odd that only channel 2 worked for you, because channel 2 is one of the overlapped channels - only 4 of the channels (1, 5, 9 & 13) do not overlap others in the UK.

zebedeee - I totally agree with you regarding the wireless channels.
It is very strange and i have no answer why only channel 2 works satisfactory within our house.
I am not sure if its interference within our house or something external?
This has been the case with the use of quite a few wireless routers and AP's

channel 2 is one of the overlapped channels - only 4 of the channels (1, 5, 9 & 13) do not overlap others in the UK

I think people misrepresent this...

Each channel overlaps roughly the 4 channels on each side,
People only choose 1,6,11 to make the most use of the range, otherwise other choices only yield two channels if you leave the same gap.

but channel 2 can still be "non-overlapping" if 7 is the next highest in use.
and 2 is not inherently a different shape nor worse than 1

Plus it will be more like a bell curve or sidebands around the centre frequency - channel boundaries won't be sharply defined (even if they are drawn that way in a diagram).

Also I think the channels widths are the same in the UK as worldwide, but with the extra 12,13 available one may as well have marginally more overlap to fit a fourth channel in (hence 1,5,9,13).

Edit: anyway I'm waffling - find out what's in use nearby and leave as much of a gap as you can - helps if you have a handheld device showing other transmitting channels+strengths in a given location.

But ultimately it can come down to trial and error including the orientation of the transmitting / receiving antennas (e.g. parallel rather than pointing at each other).

Edited by prlzx (Tue 23-Jun-09 00:41:04)

Hi
Try downloading ' InSSiDer ' from MetaGeek, this will chart all the 2.4ghz users around

your area , then move channel to the lest used area of the band. The 1st time I used it

found 7 users on channel 1 & 6 empty from 7 / 13, I cleared of to 11 ( Netgear

DG834G ) now use a Netgear DG834N set on Auto channel which hops to the lest

used channel.

Mike A

Hi, info on the Wi-Fi channels non-overlapping�

To prevent interference, there are only three non-overlapping usable channels in the
U.S. and other countries with similar regulations (channels 1, 6, 11, with 25MHz
separation), and four in Europe (channels 1, 5, 9, 13, with only 20MHz separation).

I use channel 5 and only the 802.11g standard for faster wireless speed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11g-2003

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_technical_informa...

interesting.

I got 4 users on channel 1, 5 users on channel 6 and 4 users on channel 11, 2 users on channel 13 and 1 user on channel 6.