Slower download speeds with Wifi.

[leggy]

Ok I thought one of you clever chaps might be able to shed some light on this problem.

Atm I have 8Meg ADSL (soon to be 24 but ukonline are being gay about me buying their own router) and am downloading a file from a file server (over the internet, not my LAN) that can easily support over 800KBytes/sec.

If I download the file when plugged directly into my router I get speeds of around 820 KBytes/Sec.

If I connect to my router via Wifi (802.11G and connected at 54Mbps) I only get speeds of 310 KBytes/Sec.

It seems to be a HTTP/Port80 issue (or not, I dont know) as I can get max download speeds when downloading through Usenet/my news reader. The problem only seems to exist when I download via a web browser (IE or Firefox, no difference).


/edit

I have tried disabling all firewalls/AV/Router QoS to no avail.

 

[leggy]

I thought I should add that I am definitely the only client connected to the router. I also have WEP encryption enabled (128bit) as my DS will only connect with WEP.

 

[Clown]

Wifi is USB?

 

[smurkin]

Shouldn't be due to the overhead space occupied by the encryption - but you could try turning it off.

 

[leggy]

Tried that. It also happens to any PC that I connect via wifi. So I know that it's not my wireless adapter.

And Clown... what?

 

[Clown]

Is it a USB stick or a PCI thing or what?

 

[leggy]

It's a centrino laptop so it has a built in wireless jobbie.

 

[xane]

WiFi brings back the old days of "Windows, the lying bastard" connection speeds, 802.11, like the modem V92/56K protocols, it is adaptive and constantly varies according to connection and conditions, it may well _say_ 54MB, but it is probably rarely that in practice.

When I switched from a 56K modem to 64K ISDN my download speed went up by huge amounts not just because it was 8K quicker, but because it was 64K all the time, not just at peak, I found 56K to actually be "going up and down between 12K and 44K".

How do you measure the network speed ? Get some inline tool that shows a graph rather than a straight value.

 

[leggy]

I have two independent network monitoring tools.

Even it wasn't connected at 54Mbps, it doesn't explain why I can download files at 800Kbytes/second via a newsreader over Wifi but only 300kbytes/second via http over wifi.

When I connect a cat5 patch it rockets upto 800 KBps via firefox/IE

It suggests that something is specifically limiting the bandwidth over port 80 (or something similar). I have tried two different laptops with the same results so I assume it's my router.

 

[leggy]

Ok just thought I'd add this extra bit.. even though no one appears to know what could be wrong.

If I download 3 files from any web server the respective download speeds add up to 800KB/sec or thereabouts. But each file is limited to 300KB/s. This is the same with any webbrowser I use to download the files.

I have heard of a similar problem with OSX where a single socket connection is bandwidth limited due to a bug but have not heard anything relative to XP.

This is my last cry for help as I am truly stumped.

 

[leggy]

This is becoming a one person conversation I don't mind though.

Ok so I can get round the problem with Flashget download manager and the Flashgot firefox plugin. 800KBps all the way now. That's with one connection in flashget.

Shame I can't find the source of the real problem...

 

[nath]

I'm not entirely sure but just to chuck extra info your way, I'm wired in to my router and I always need to go to usenet and use 10threads to max out my connection to about 2.1MB/s single threads never cut it. With your wifi thing I doubt it's a port/application issue more a thread issue though technically speaking I'm not sure what's going on. Tbh, if you're moving on to 24mbit you don't want wifi anyway - get yourself patched in permanently.

 

[leggy]

Thanks nath. I think I will get wired up when I upgrade.

I don't have any problem maxing out my connection on usenet though (with about 6 - 8 threads). It's only with http downloads that there is a bottleneck somewhere.