Router limiting internet speed
 

Ok, so my dad got a router(the router is trendnet TEW-432BRP D1.2R, not sure how good it is) so that I can share internet with him via wireless. The internet cable is connected to the router, from the router I have another cable connected to my computer, and to my dad's laptop internet goes through wlan. The problem is my internet speed has dropped by 3/4. If I plug in the internet cable directly into my computer, my speed is back up at 100%. Now I'm not acquainted with routers, but my dad set it up and everything (it's also secured, with passwords and everything so no one else is connecting but the 2 of us) but this whole speed limitation is beyond him apparently.If anyone knows his way with routers and could help, I'm here to answer all your questions and hopefully make this "bloody wretched demon from the underworld" work. My internet options also are all set automatically (DNS,dhcp.ip whatever).

Try changing the channel on the router.

I had a massive WLAN speed drop the other day going down to 3.5Mbps from a normal 54Mbps..

I changed the channel as I figured I might be getting interference from something and low and behold I got 54Mbps back regardless of where I was in the house.

The channel is the first thing to try. Have had the same issue here where another wireless device (home theatre system) was using the same channel. Helped tremendously.

How do I do that ? :doh:

EDIT: Yeah did that. it doesn't change anything.

OK - if changing channels doesn work, then check the mode. Make sure its not 802.11b when you need 802.11g (or vice versa).

Make sure the router is set for 108Mbps over wireless. Check and see what the fragmentation length setting is as well as the CTS/RTS thresholds. Mine are set to 2346 and 2347 respectively. See what the preamble mode is (if its there) - long or short - if possible set it to short. As long as this doesn't kill your connection, good.

Next - make sure the device isn't also selected to be used as a wireless repeater. Most wireless devices can - and it should not be turned on.

Some of these settings may not be availble on your device - if not don't sweat it.

However - with all this done - lets nor forget that the problem may not be the router - but your wireless reciever. What are the specs on it - could it be the bottleneck?
*Has it ever run "full speed" elsewhere?

I don't think his wireless receiver is the problem:
I don't know what the problem is, I just want to make sure everyone is looking at the right issue.

Good luck.

I just want to clarify whether the problem is with your Dad's machine or yours?

You say your's is connected via a cable to the router, is that correct?

Your Dad's laptop is connected via wireless is that correct?

What speed do you get on your machine when you connect via the cable?

What speed does your Dad's machine get when you connect it via the cable?

you should also try updating its firmware.
I've had a similar problem like you've got, with my router in between my speed was like 10% of my speed without router. Updating the firmware brought it back to about 90% of the speed.

Firmware is updated. The problem is with my machine (dad's speed doesn't matter since he only uses it for browsing and stuff...). The internet cable is plugged into the router, from the router, internet comes to me via another cable, and wirelessly to my dad's laptop. My speed used to be 10mbps downloading, now it's 2.5 max. I forgot to mention that this lower speed I'm talking about is when using bittorrent type (peer to peer) software/downloading. After further testing, browsing webpages, and downloading drivers. mods, etc. using mozilla (my browser) the speed is unchanged. But when I use peer to peer the speed drops to maximum of 2-2.5 mbps. Apparently it may have something to do with port forwarding or whatever, but I kinda tried that (not sure how good I did) and it didn't work.

OK I misunderstood - I thought the problem was on the wireless side.

As for your issue at this point - I can only say look at whatever software your using and see if it uses a dedicated port. If so - make sure that is the port you forward from the router to the IP of your machine. Also - some p2p applications have various speed configuration settings. Check those.

If everything else if fast, your not looking at a major issue - and the issue wont be the router per se. Its either a port issue or some config option software wise.

This really shoulda been in the pc/hardware section.

+1 That makes some sense now. Have you tried speedtest.net or similar internet speed testing tools? This should give you a reasonable idea of your DL and UL speeds and if it is only torrents that is having the problem then you may have a port forwarding problem.

Yea I'm leaning more and more on the port forwarding issue (though I can't make it work still...) speedtest.com shows the same speed whether I use the router or not. I'm using uTorrent and have found out what port it uses, but the router asks for a certain "port range" (don't know where do I get that) and also I don't know how to set the incoming and outcoming data transfer (TCP, UDP and * which I believe means both).

PS: sorry for posting here, just now I saw there's a hardware/software section

Port range is the port #

uTorrent uses 17120 by default.

In your router - put this as both the starting and ending port - the destination IP is the IP of your computer. Check this with ipconfig from a command window.

Also - make sure you set windows up to use a static IP on your pc - otherwise you will reboot and likely end up with problems again.

For those who may wonder why we are helping with "torrents" and the like - remember that SUBSIM does not condone piracy of any nature - but there are legitimate uses for such downloads. For example - all the Company of Heroes patches are available from relic ONLY through torrents.

Torrent is preferred for large downloads imho; no chance on corrupted downloads. Something like a Linux distro I really prefer using Torrent. :yep:

Another thing to try is enabling UPnP port mapping in Utorrent and enabling it on the router as well (if it has that option).

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/374/routerr.jpg
So here is an image with the router options thingy. Not too many as you can see. My uTorrent's port (as it says in the options) is 63509. UPnP port mapping is enabled as well. The port range I found on the internet was 6881-6889. So I tried all this, and checked the asterisk (not UDP or TCP) at incoming and trigger protocols, wrote the port, port range, picked a name, checked Enable and it didn't work, however I have to admit that the IPs are still set to automatic and not static (I kinda wish all this would be able to do WITHOUT setting the IP to static since it may screw everything up for me). Should I write my uTorrent port in the port range boxes as well ?