20MB coming in at well under speed?

[Dave9946]

Recently upgraded to 20mb BB but getting typically between 5mb and 12mb. Now I'm not stupid in that I'm complaining that I'm not getting the full 20mb speed as I always knew that was fairly unlikely to get the full 20mb. But I am wandering if there are limitations my end that is preventing me from getting the max speeds possable?. By the way any speed tests are being done while no net app or downloading is taking place lol

Now the laptop and desktop are both wireless. The lappy has it's built in wireless while the desktop is currently running wireless via 1 of those usb dongle things. They are then connected via my Netgear WRT54GL wireless router!.

Both the lappy and the desktop are resulting in very similar speeds when the tests are done after each other. So not exacally a problem there I can see of.

But is there anything I could\should be doing in order to check or make sure I'm getting the fastest speeds possable hardware wise?.

[zing_deleted]

have you run a download test using a reliable site and a multi threaded download app?

[Richy99]

its also quite possible that the wireless is limiting the speed of it, if you go direct into the modem and bypass the router what speeds do you get?

what is the signal strength like on the machines

When i had a 54g router the max i saw was about 13meg due to the wireless conditions, upgraded to N series and now i dont get any slowdowns

[moaningmags]

Have you tried a direct connection from modem to computer?
I'd try this first, rules the router out or in.

[danielf]

The fact that you are getting similar speeds on both machines does suggest something is up with your connection. However, it may still be worth optiming the machines using TCP optimizer (http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php)

[Zhadnost]

I had strange speed issues for a while when for some reason the DHCP reposonse from my cable modem was setting the mtu on the interface to 50. (changing the dhcp client to not ask/ignore mtu settings fixed this for me).

[ceedee]

But is there anything I could\should be doing in order to check or make sure I'm getting the fastest speeds possable hardware wise?.

To get an accurate idea of your connection speed:
Turn off your pc and cable modem.

Connect one of your pcs direct to the cable modem, bypassing your router.

Power up your modem and wait (at least 30 secs) for the leds to settle. Then turn on your pc.

Close as many applications on your computer as possible, in particular any P2P, streaming or IM programs.

Start 2 simultaneous downloads from the VM demo games server (http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com/blueyondergames/demos/) plus 2 simultaneous downloads of Zen test files (http://fuller.zen.co.uk/test). That's four file downloads happening at once!
Now add up each of the four download speeds to get your accurate download rate.

If you are still seeing substantially less than your expected download speed, your connection may have been Traffic Managed (http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php) (also called STM, traffic throttling or shaping).
In which case check your *upload* speed -- if you're uploading faster than 128kbps (or 16kB/s) for M (2Mb) and L (4Mb) connections or 192kbps (or 24kB/s) for XL (20Mb) then the slow-down you are experiencing is almost certainly not due to being STM'd.

[The SicKest V]

20mb is for life Not just for xmas.

[Dave9946]

Thanks for the help and advice guys, the lappy is the secondry machine so I'm not to bothered about the speeds on that as such. But just testing the lappy via wireless has it doing a little over 10mb at the moment. Certainly more than the gf will ever need lol. But the lappy was coming in at a little over 15mb when I had it wired into the router.

Just wired the desktop (main pc) into the router and 3 tests in a row shows it as anything from 15mb to a little over 19mb using the London server on speedtest.net. And that will be as fast as I'll ever expect to get I guess!.

So think I'm gonna leave the lappy wireless and have the desktop always wired to the router.