Wireless Internet Woes

[RSteve]

Need some help and advice.

Basically, in our house we have a Wireless Router in the hall at the front of the house, it's one supplied by Orange who are our ISP (it's white and looks like a book stood on its side). We have the main family PC downstairs running internet wirelessly through a Belkin N USB adaptor, we also have my desktop PC too running from my room on exactly the same adaptor. As well as the two desktops we have my mums laptop, my Xbox and my phone (which I rarely use wifi when at home anyway).

So, the issues. Within the last say 3-4 months, the internet has gone s**t. It will drop connection randomly and then come back up again, it also sometimes doesn't work for hours (when looking at connectivity it says 'connected' but 'no internet access'). I attempt to load a page on my phone through wifi and it fails to load even google. When it is connected and fine, browsing is not a problem at all, we use the internet without any problems. The problem however is downloading. I regularly download music and torrents, in which it literally will take a day and a half to download a 15mb music file. Torrents don't even get to 0.1%, the download speed is something like 0.5 B/s!! I also have a terrible connection on Xbox Live, I join party's and other people lose connection because of me, it takes forever to download DLC's and tonight I was even unable to connect to a party due to 'network issues'.

I've had suggestions from all over the place, I've tested my internet speed and it's something like 5mb/s dl speed and 0.90 upload speed. People have said that too many devices are fighting over one connection (which is b****cks as they're rarely all used at once), that the router is in a bad place in the house, and is s**t as it is an ISP provided one.

It's the downloading and gammy connection that is frustrating me though. I can't use Xbox Live, I can't buy my music and download it, I can't watch my movies and shows, I can't subscribe to any streaming stuff as I probably won't be able to due to the connection.

Any ideas folks? Much appreciated.

 

[Slammed172]

Try hard wiring your Xbox to the router and turning off all wireless computers/phones. Then if it's still slow then it's the router as 5meg is more than enough for online gaming.

 

[Adamm.]

Our internet was constantly playing up a while ago. Same sort of issues mega slow downloads loss of connection for a minute etc.

We are with AOL after I had enough of the crap internet I decided I would have ago at removing all the software and then re installing it all again. So pretty much set it all up again (I am not computer smart at all may I just add). Its actually the only thing thats worked everything like the reset router port forwarding etc just works for a few hours then it starts going funny again.

Its been a few months and its still as fast as when I re installed it all. Hopefully It will stay like this now but I doubt it.

 

[N90DLW]

one of the following

change wireless channel, sometimes auto isnt the best
buy a Draytek router (expensive) but good
portforward the xbox
wireless hotspot/repeater/bridge

 

[jenic]

Slow torrents could be traffic shaping, solution is change ISP or stop using torrents.

Try ringing orange and getting them to send you the new netgear routers they are giving away now?

I left orange after many speed issue's, went to sky and they were spot on until we got infinity.

 

[Carbon-Rain]

From what you have said it can be a number of issues you have there with the WiFi, but you can go through a few test which will help identify the problem.
1. Connect a laptop to the router using a cable and check the speed on the line. (www.speedtest.net)
If the connection is stable and the speeds are about what you expect then try a large download from the web. Download something from Microsoft like the Windows 7 Service pack1. Heres a link to a 94MB Directx download http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=8109

If this downloads with good speeds then your connection is good and stable.

2. WiFi problems can come from a large number of sources, the signal can be degraded by walls, PIR's and microwaves for a few items. I expect you are also not the only person in your street with a WiFi router in place and seeing as most people just use the default setup there will be alot of clashes. So log in to the router and change the default channel you use, start at the lower end at about Channel 3 and see who it goes slowly changing channel if you still have problems. If you have an android phone then you can down load one of the wifi tool from the market place WiFi where, and Wifi finder are good as they will show you all the other routers it can pick up and the channel it is transmitting on.

3. Alot of ISP's block torrent traffic or use traffic shapeing to control the amount of data that flows over the network, use a torrent client which will allow you to change the default port used for the traffic. There are some default port ranges for torrents so use a port or range out of these it will give you a fighting chance.

4. If all else fails try and get another router to use you will need to find out the connection settings for orange but that can be found using google.